


Everything Was White

by lexosaurus



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Danny needs a lot of therapy though ngl, GIW, Gen, Hurt Danny, Identity Reveal, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Original characters for plot purposes, PTSD, Recovery, Therapy, Torture, but like....phiccs, sorry my dude for doing this to you, ya feel?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2019-08-11 02:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16467191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexosaurus/pseuds/lexosaurus
Summary: After being accidentally revealed to the public and taken away by the government, Danny deals with the aftermath of his time with the GiW.





	1. Animal

"What do you remember about that day, Danny?"

The smell of antiseptic mixed with the citrus odor of ectoplasm. The sounds of expensive black shoes clicking against the tiled floors. Powerful hands, gripping small arms, dragging a lifeless body across the floor. The bright lights. Lips on tall faces that were always set in a frown. The white walls, floors, ceiling, suits. The glare of the lights against the floor. It's all white. The clang of the metal instruments being dropped on the white tiles. Who did that? It's so bright. The shoes won't stop clicking against the floor. Where's the body going? Why is it so  _bright_?

"Danny?" The therapist leaned in, tilting her head to the side. Her blond hair slipped off her shoulder. "Talk to me."

"Nothing." Danny's eyes darted down to his lap where he held a blue stress ball. He pressed a finger into it, denting the material. It was soft, yet held a certain firmness that helped to ground his mind. He let out a shaky breath.

"I don't think I believe that," the therapist said lightly.

Danny furrowed his brow. "It's too...I don't know."

The therapist sat patiently, waiting for him to finish processing his thoughts. She was the best, the hospital had reassured his parents. She would be able to get through to him. Danny wasn't so sure. How broken was too broken for a therapist? At what point would medication not be enough? This wasn't normal. Nothing about this was okay. He wasn't okay.

Danny's mouth pressed into a thin line, twitching slightly. It was as if his mouth knew what it wanted to say, but it just couldn't quite find the words to say it. "It's too...bright," he finished lamely.

"That sounds stressful."

"I guess."

The therapist relaxed in her chair, her blond curls bouncing slightly at the movement. She folded her hands across her lap. In the moment, she looked so similar to Jazz that Danny could have smiled. "Did this happen the day after you were kidnapped?"

"No." Danny squished his fingers deeper into the stress ball. He was starting to get a headache. "No...it happened…after."

"How far after?"

"I don't know. After."

It was the climax of his stay at the facility. The day everyone was waiting for. All other tests had been run. They knew Danny's core temperature, they knew his height and weight, they knew his exact power level, they knew which chemicals he reacted to and which ones he didn't. They knew how to take down a ghost far better than they  _ever_ did. They had the knowledge they needed.

Now it was time to have fun with their prize.

The therapist nodded. "You mentioned a few days ago that they said something to you when you got to the room? Do you know what they said?"

"No." The words were an automatic reflex at this point. He remembered everything. Every footstep, every speck of dust on the ceiling, every drop of ectoplasm that stained the floor behind him.

"Where's your bark, dog?" The worst of them had said, laughing as he prodded Danny with a low-powered electrical stick. The real pain was in the collar. The stick was just for show. "Little doggy's lost his bark, hasn't he?"

His eyes darted around him. Chains appeared on his side. He shivered, the chains cold against his bare skin. When had they chained him to the table? Green bled into the white tiles, into the white of his jumpsuit. Of his gloves. The DP logo was gone and replaced by a gaping hole in his chest.

A hole.

In his.

In his chest.

"Struggle against me again, dog, and you'll get a lot worse than an electric shock."

"I'm not a dog," he whispered.

He wasn't a dog. They couldn't tell him he was. He wasn't a dog.

"They called you a dog, Danny?" the therapist asked, her clear voice piercing through the dense fog in his mind.

His head snapped up. He glared into the grays of her eyes. "I'm not a dog."

"I know, Danny." The therapist jotted down something in her notebook.

"I'm not a dog," he repeated, less sure of himself.

The therapist nodded again. "You're not," she affirmed.

"Right." Danny said awkwardly, his eyebrows creased in confusion. They sat for a minute in silence. Danny turned the stress ball around in his hands, focusing on the way the light of the office reflected against the matte rubber. It was soft, soothing. He pressed a finger into the ball, disrupting the flow of the light.

"So they took you into a room, right? Can you describe it for me?"

Danny tapped his fingers against the ball. "It was white. Like the others."

The therapist leaned in, resting her elbows on her knees. "Danny, are you okay to tell me what happened next?"

He shrugged. It didn't matter, anyways. He had to. His parents were paying good money to make sure he did. And the last thing he wanted was to let his family down. They'd already been through so much, with him being ripped away from his home so violently like he was. Jazz hadn't been able to leave visits without tearing up yet. And his mother...

Danny didn't know how to deal with his mother crying.

"They, uh, put me on—uh, I mean, they shocked me first." He risked a glance up at the therapist. He had her undivided attention. "And I went on this table. And...and then—uh—they...you know."

"What happened?" She said, her voice soft like velvet.

"You read the report," Danny said bitterly.

"I want to hear it from you."

Danny glared down at his lap. "They put me on the table and poked me with the metal stick. And laughed. And then...they...my jumpsuit—and. They took the scalp—" Danny choked, dropping the stress ball on the floor. His hands shot up and grabbed his hair. He bent down until his elbows mimicked the therapist's.

"I'm—I'm sorry." He rocked back and forth in his chair. "I'm sorry."

"Danny, it's okay. You in a safe place. Focus on my voice."

"I'm sorry," Danny gasped, struggling to slow the erratic air coursing through his lungs. In, out. In, out. He shut his eyes, chasing away the memories. Like a bad horror movie, they refused to stop. They flashed against his eyelids in random snippets. A flash of light as a new metal instrument was plucked from the table. The agents unzipping his jumpsuit and touching his bare skin. The white hot pain of his skin being peeled ba—

"That's right, Danny. Breath. You're right here, in my office. You're safe. Focus on my voice. Breath with me okay? In...and out. In….and out."

He was in the office.

"You're doing so great, Danny. Keep breathing with me. In...and out…and in…"

He was in the office.

"Danny, can you look at me?"

Breathe.

He was in the office. He was safe. In, and out. He needed to look at his therapist. She was there to help him.

His unfocused gaze shifted up to meet the steady eyes of his therapist. She smiled warmly at him. "Danny, you're doing so great. I know this is very difficult, and I'm proud that you're starting to open up with me. The things you're feeling right now are valid and okay. You don't need to apologize to me or anyone else about it, okay?"

In, and out.

"Yeah."

* * *

Danny arrived at the adolescent inpatient facility two weeks ago. He knows this because that's what the psychiatrists have been telling him. He also knows he came home from the GiW facility a month before that because he asked Jazz on the phone last week and she told him. And then she asked if he was okay and if he needed her to call a nurse and if he felt better on medication. He hung up and wheeled away, only for her to  _show up_ at the facility the next day furious for hanging up on her. Looking back, he knew it was a shitty thing to do. He just...couldn't handle her energy at the time.

"You're lucky your sister cares about you that much," a brunette boy told him stiffly, coloring in a mountain scene he'd outlined.

There wasn't much to do in the facility during free time, but one thing the hospital did provide is blank sheets of paper and markers. Some of the markers even had stamps on the other side. Danny found the yellow one with star-stamps last week, which quickly turned into his favorite marker. It didn't require much thinking, just a gentle press into the blank sheet of paper.

The other boy arrived a few days into Danny's stay. He was set to leave the facility next week, he said. He had a standard two-week stay. Suicide attempt, he'd told everyone during group therapy.

"My sister moved out when I was eight," the boy went on. "She comes around on holidays, but other than that I don't see her much. My family's not that close like yours is."

"Jazz is nice." Danny said. His therapist told him he needed to talk to the other patients more. But it was...weird. The other patients knew about Phantom. The whole world did. He was all over the news, apparently. Some of the other patients were starstruck that  _Danny Phantom_ of all people was here in the facility, but others were less happy. Some people refused to look him in the eye, glared at him when they thought he didn't notice. Others cowered from him, afraid he would beat them up for existing. Like the GiW did to him.

The boy paused his coloring. "You know, during...everything...she was on the news all the time, right? Demanding for the government to let you come home? She cares about you so much, dude. You're so lucky."

He felt something flare inside of him. "I'm not lucky."

The other boy looked up at him in surprise. "What?"

"I was locked up in a government facility for...for three weeks. How is—uh, how is that lucky?" Danny asked.

"I was saying that you're lucky your sister loves you so much, not that you became a walking experiment—"

"Shut up!" Danny was on his feet in an instant, his face red. "I'm not! I didn't ask for this! Shut up!"

"Boys!" Came one of the nursing assistants. "Is everything okay?"

"I'm sorry!" Danny yelled, his eyes wide.

"Phantom's gone crazy," the brunette said. Turning to Danny, he hissed, "I can't believe  _you_ were in charge of protecting—"

The nursing assistant held up her hands. "Devon, would you like to take a minute alone in your room?"

"No, I want to get back to my activity!" The brunette pointed at his paper. "It's not my fault Phantom's acting like an animal!"

The blood drained from his face. "I'm not a dog!" Danny yelled reflexively. His shaking hands flew up to grip his hair.

The nursing assistant held up a hand. "Danny, I know you're not. Would you like to come over here with me?"

No, he needed her to understand. She needed to understand. "I'm not a dog!"

Another staff member approached him. "That's right, Danny. Would you like to continue coloring with me?"

"I need to...to change." He mentally poked at his sleeping core.

"Change into what?"

He needed to get out. Leave. The walls in here were white. Who designed that? He was trapped. He couldn't breathe. He tried to transform again. "Why can't I change?"

"I think he's talking about his ghost," one of the staff members whispered to the other.

"It's not my ghost, it's me," Danny argued. "I can't...I can't find it. I need to—uh, to get out of here."

The bright lights glared down at him, and walls started to move in. A familiar weight appeared on his neck. No no, he wasn't back at the government compound. He was at the hospital. Breath two three, out two three…

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the first staff member pick up the brunette's art supplies and move to another table.

"Do you remember when you got here?" the new staff member's voice was patient. "The hospital had to give you a chip that took away your...other side for a time. It'll be out as soon as you are ready to leave the hospital, I promise. Why don't you sit down and color with me, Danny?"

"I'll get it back?" Danny said, a hand automatically covering his chest where his core rested.

"Yes, Danny, once you complete this program," the nurse said. "Please sit down with me?"

"Okay," he said, removing his trembling hand slowly from his hair. "Okay."

He glanced around the room. People were looking at him. Some people seemed curious, but most appeared tense, as if they were plotting their escapes should he go on a murderous rampage.

He blew out a large stream of air and sat back down in his seat, suddenly exhausted. He tried to ignore the way the tension in the room immediately dissipated. He scowled, despite his best efforts.

The staff member slid a blank sheet of paper towards her. "What do you think I should draw, Danny?"

Danny shrugged and glanced around for the yellow stamp marker. It was on the floor. When did it fall?

She bent down and grabbed the marker from the floor. Handing it to him, she said, "I think I'll draw my favorite lake that my family likes to go to during the summer. What are you drawing, Danny?"

"Space. Or something," he said, poking the marker at his paper. Maybe he could make some constellations while he was at it.

"That's cool! Space is so interesting, and I love those markers. Something about using those stamps is just so relaxing, isn't it?" she asked.

Danny shrugged again.

"You want to work with NASA, right?"

Danny frowned. "I do…"

"You seem unsure," she observed.

"I just don't know if...you know...someone like me can be hired by them," Danny said. "It's not exactly a secret that people are afraid of me. You know? And after...everything…" Danny huffed, pausing his coloring and reaching for his hair once again. "My grades are awful I'm not...I mean, uh...I'm not exactly human. The...the government made sure to let me know."

She sighed. "Danny, don't—"

"But it's true, isn't it?" his wide eyes met hers. "That no one thinks of me as human? I mean, I—I know...like..I'm  _not_ but I still...I still want to be  _treated_ like one." An all-too familiar lump formed in his throat. "And I know what the other...other people...teens say here. They're all...all afraid of, uh...me. And I—I know the staff is too. Ghosts aren't...they're not—uh...mindless blobs of...of energy. We have thoughts and...stuff...feelings too. They're just...a...just different...I guess. But they're still there."

"None of the staff is afraid of you, Danny," she reassured. "If we were, you wouldn't be in this facility. But you're  _here_ because we and your parents want to help you. You've been through something really traumatic and everything you're feeling is normal and  _very human,_ okay? We all want what's best for you."

"Then why aren't I—uh, I allowed to go ghost?" Danny demanded. "Why do I have this...this...chip inside me?"

"Hospital policy against having weapons inside," the staff member told him. "You know this, Danny. It's not that we don't trust you, it's that we are responsible for everyone that passes through these doors. Including you. What if you use your powers to hurt yourself? What if you use them to leave? We can't have that." Her expression softened considerably as she added, "And I don't think this response is that surprising to you, right?"

No. It wasn't surprising. But that didn't mean he had to agree with it.

"Yeah, I guess."

"You can't control what others think of you based on the media, but by being a good person, which you  _are_ , you can change people's perceptions of you. And Danny, I don't think anyone here thinks badly of you."

His jaw tightened. "You're wrong."

"I think people may be initially apprehensive or nervous, but once people meet you it goes away immediately. People  _like_ you, Danny. You're a good person and it shows."

He was silent at that.

"Do you think you're a good person?" the staff member asked with a gentle voice.

"I don't know," Danny answered, refusing to meet her eyes. "I try to be. But I...I don't think...you know, I don't think it's working."

"But you still try, right?" she pressed.

"Yeah," Danny said.

"Then that's all that matters."

They continued coloring in silence for a while. Eventually, even Danny was forced to admit his night sky had more than enough stars in it. He flipped his sheet of paper around and starting drawing Saturn. He always liked the way Saturn looked with its rings and its swirling gas clouds. It was colorful, yet peaceful at the same time. If only he could see it in person.

Something wasn't right. Before, he didn't realize. But now, with the silence and the mindless energy of dotting stars against the night sky, he understood what was wrong. And before he could help himself, Danny blurted out, "I don't like that."

The staff member peaked over at Danny's drawing, "Your drawing of Saturn? It looks good to me."

Danny shook his head. "No. Not that."

The staff member stayed silent, allowing Danny to collect his thoughts. His brow furrowed, and he gripped the table as if that stability would someone help him form sentences faster. "I...don't like...being called an animal."

"Yeah?" the staff member asked, a clear prompt to continue.

"They...you know," Danny shifted uncomfortably. Before coming to the psych ward, his parents hardly made him talk about his experiences. They thought space was the answer. One month and several meltdowns later, his parents had realized that space was very much  _not_ the solution. Talking through issues with professionals was. Danny, despite his teen hormones still screaming at him to block everyone out, had to agree.

"Sorry," he apologized. "This is hard."

"It's okay. We have all the time you need here."

"I just—it's just like, uh...they never—they never called me by my name. Ever," Danny said awkwardly. "One of the nicknames they liked was—uh, was dog. Sometimes it was just animal though. Like...like they couldn't pick the worst one. I was all of them combined. I was...I was just an animal to them."

The GiW called him that right from the start. They hit his head in the van ride over to the facility, which they said was because they couldn't have him escaping, but Danny knew better. They dragged his dazed body through the maze that was their hallway system until they stopped at a pristine white door, identical to the other doors they passed on the way over in all manners except for its label.  _Alpha Priority Room._

"I'm that special?" Danny asked, his brave mask doing nothing to cover his trembling voice. The GiW had injected his body with some liquid on the way over, forcing him into Phantom form. He couldn't change back, no matter how hard he tried.

"Save it, ghost scum," one of the agents said as he swiped his card along the scanner next to the door.

The door hissed open, revealing a room no larger than a prison cell. The walls, ceiling, and floor was all white, and four security cameras sat upon the corners of the room. There were no lights on the ceiling, no windows overlooking the outside. Just whiteness.

The agent shoved him inside, and his weakened form could do little more than brace his impact to the ground. Danny rolled over just in time to hear the agent snarl, "You're government property now. No one can save you here. You're nothing more than a fucking animal to us."

The door closed, and Danny was encased in darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr @lexoaurus I post a lot of dp memes


	2. Taken

"Can we talk about the day you were taken?"

Danny let out a long breath. His therapist had been kind enough to avoid this specific topic up until now. However, with his looming release date, his therapist seemed to conclude that enough was enough. There were certain topics—topics that Danny would much prefer to bury down in his memory and never mention again—that needed to be brought up if he were to 'stabilize' enough to reenter society in a week. "What about it?"

She adjusted her clipboard and tucked a loose blond curl behind her ears. "Let's start with what you were doing just before they showed up."

"I wasn't even doing anything. I...I was home," Danny said, fighting to keep the defensive tone out of his voice. "I was in my room. Playing—uh, video games with Sam and Tucker."

The therapist frowned and scanned her notes, "Your friends were there?"

"No," Danny said quickly. "We were voice chatting."

"Ah," she nodded. "So you were playing video games. What happened next?"

"I heard noise from downstairs. Yelling."

"Your parents?" she prompted.

Danny shrugged and looked down. The blue stress ball was back on his lap. He didn't really remember picking it up before sessions now. Whenever he sat down in the comfy green armchair it was always in his hands. "Yeah. The...the Guys in White must have knocked and I didn't hear it. I don't...I don't know."

"Did you go downstairs to see what was going on?"

Danny snorted. "Well, I  _tried_. I opened my door and—uh, only to have Jazz come running down the hallway. She...she looked like a madman." His expression fell, and he picked on a lose thread on his shirt sleeve. "She was...was yelling at me. Don't go downstairs. I should have listened. I don't...I can't…"

Jazz's normally immaculate hair splayed all over her face as she stormed down the hallway. A clump was caught in her lip, but she made no move to wipe it to the side. Her eyes were wide with panic, and her mouth was open but motionless. Her hands waved in front of her, a clear motion to  _STOP_!

Danny's look confusion immediately turned into one of concern. "What's going on?"

Her voice returned to her. "Danny! Get out of here! Run! "They're here!"

"Who's here?" Danny said.

Jazz reached where Danny stood and started attempting to push him back in his room, yelling, "Go away, don't come home until we call you!"

"Jazz, stop!" Danny snapped, annoyance beginning to slip into his tone. To his surprise, Jazz took her hands off him. "Who's here?"

A frustrated tear slid down her cheek, "No, you don't understand, you can't go downstairs," she begged. "It's the Guys in White."

"Danny?" came a familiar voice.

Danny's head snapped up, his eyes meeting his therapists'. He was in her office. Sun beamed in through the large windows, lighting up the dull gray-brown carpet. "Sorry," he whispered.

"It's okay," she said. Her voice was comforting. "Are you alright to continue?"

"Y-yeah," Danny said. He took a deep breath. "Yeah," he repeated, his voice stronger.

"Okay," the therapist nodded. "But you need to let me know if you're not alright to continue at any point during this, okay? If we need to take a break at any point, we can."

Danny nodded, "Okay. I'm alright to continue."

The therapist gave him a reassuring smile. Picking up her pencil again, she pressed on, "So Jazz stopped you from going downstairs?"

"She...she tried," Danny said, his focus back on the stress ball. He rolled it around in his fingers. "It all happened so fast."

"I understand, Danny," the therapist said. "It must have been extremely frightening for you."

"Yeah," Danny said, a glazed look beginning to appear to his face. "She was screaming at me...and I finally got it out of her who was there…"

"And?" the therapist said. "Focus on me, Danny."

"Yeah," Danny said, his eyes trailing back up to the therapist. "I phased right through her. She was trying to push me back into...uh, into my room. So I went through her. Wouldn't have made a difference either way. They...they had...they had the whole house surrounded. And she was crying. Begging me not to go downstairs but...my parents…"

"What about them?" The therapist asked.

Danny placed a hand over his core. "I had to protect them."

"Don't do this!" Jazz screamed from behind him. "Goddamnit Danny please listen to me!"

"They're going to hurt Mom and Dad!" Danny exclaimed, releasing his intangibility and running towards the stairs.

His heartbeat thundered in his ear. Ectoplasmic energy surfaced to his skin, and his fists sparked in response. Despite being in his human form, his core  _throbbed_. It  _needed_  to take over. People were in  _danger_. He  _needed_  to go ghost.

He suppressed the urge and continued on, all but flying down the stairs and bolting out to the living room where to find his parents, red faced, screaming at four Guys in White agents on his doorstep.

"I was afraid," Danny said, rocking back and forth in his chair. "I thought that the...Guys in...the agents would hurt them to—to get to me. No, I  _know_  they would have hurt them to get to me. They...they  _did_."

"They hurt your parents, Danny?" the therapist said, her tone serious.

Danny ran a hand through his hair, pausing at the end to grab a fistfull of hair. He bowed his hand, pulling at the strands in a vain attempt to lock himself in reality. "Yeah. They did. Not right away but my...you know, they tried—my parents did. So hard. To block the agents from me. I knew they would, I  _knew_  they would, you know? It's so...so like the Guys in White too. They don't care about anyone...no one...anything, even humans, that are in the way of their...their  _prize_. Me. I had to go downstairs, you get it?"

She nodded sympathetically. "Of course, Danny. So you went downstairs to protect them."

"Yeah," Danny answered the non-question. He shifted uncomfortably. "I can't explain it. The feeling that I get—that any ghost gets—when their...their...obsession—the thing that  _drives_  them—is called upon. I know that you...you're aware. I mean, you're my  _therapist_. You  _have_  to be. But it's just...it's…"

"It's overwhelming, isn't it?" the therapist offered.

Danny nodded. "And during the accident, I don't remember it, but I wasn't—ah, I mean, my 'death,' for lack of a better term, wasn't normal. I  _didn't_  die, but I...I mean...I turned into a ghost. If that makes any sense. And I had...didn't have a purpose for a—uh, solid month. My ectoplasm wasn't stable enough. It kept rejecting my body. I know we've already talked about the accident and stuff so you know that all already. But still."

"It's important to you," the therapist said. "It's okay to talk about these things, Danny. They're important. They're all little pieces of the puzzle that makes you  _you_."

"Mm," Danny hummed in response. "Right. And, you know, I did eventually get that drive. My ectoplasm started...started stabilizing. And now the ghost part of me has this  _thing_. To protect. To help people in dis...distress. So when I heard my parents yelling and Jazz was crying and it all…it just got so...overwhelming. I  _needed_  to go downstairs. To help them. Protect them from the government." Danny's head fell into his hands. "It sounds so stupid saying it now. As if  _I_  could actually  _do_  anything about the government who...who came to get me in the first place. It...none of it even mattered."

"Maybe it feels that way now," the therapist said. "But I think the fact that you tried to help your family members in distress just goes to show what a kind person you are, Danny."

"I guess," Danny said, sounding unconvinced. Kind or just incredibly impulsive and dumb. He was still torn between the two.

The therapist tilted her head. Her blond hair was parted to the side, with the more voluminous side pinned back with a butterfly clip. A large curl fell onto her shoulder, providing a splash of light against her gray sweater. "So you were downstairs. What did you see?"

Danny lifted his head up, his hands automatically going back down to his lap to grip the stress ball. He ran his thumb along the rubber and said, "Mom and Dad were at the door. Their backs were to me. It looked like they were trying to...to block the entrance? I think. They were yelling. They were trying to get the agents to leave. Arguing about laws. But the laws only protect humans. They didn't stand a chance."

His vision faltered, and suddenly he was in his living room. He looked ahead and saw a group of six adults standing by his doorway. His parents were outnumbered, he realized. He needed to help them.

"Mom? Dad? What's going on?" Danny said, cautiously approaching the group.

The argument immediately halted as six pairs of eyes swiveled around to meet his. He met the gazes of his parents, and his heart plummeted to his stomach. He knew. Oh god, he  _knew_.

"Danny, please go back upstairs," said his father in an oddly strained tone that didn't fit his personality. His face was chalk white. "The adults will sort this out, okay? Go with your sister."

He glanced at his Mom. She was always the strong parent. The woman that always made sure they woke up on time for school in the morning, no matter if she had the flu or had pulled an all-nighter with Dad to work on a project. The parent that, when he broke his arm in first grade and had to take the scary trip to the ER, kissed his forehead and told him that everything was going to be okay. And the mother that had promised Danny she would start teaching him to drive soon and helped him shop for bowties to match Sam's dress for the homecoming dance and, after the initial fighting and tears had passed after he was outed on national television as Phantom, had hugged him and told him that she loved him and how proud of him she was and how blessed she was to have such amazing children.

But he looked at her. Her eyes were red, her skin was blotchy with tears or fury or both, Danny couldn't tell. The desperate expression, the silent plea to  _please go_  was enough to shatter any semblance of false bravado he had left in him.

"Danny Fenton Phantom," one of the agents said, ignoring his Dad, "By order of the United States government in accordance with the of the Anti Ecto Control Act, you're now considered property of the United States. You can either come freely or—"

"No he is  _not_!" his Mom snapped, gathering her bearings. "He is a  _child_. A human child!"

The head-agent's expression hardened as his focus was taken off Danny and returned back to Maddie. " _It_  has been contaminated with Ectoplasm. Its DNA can no longer be considered human. Now you  _will_  allow us to take the ghost or we will be forced to arrest you both as well."

"They called me an it," Danny whispered, returning to reality.

"What did you feel? When they said that?" the therapist asked.

"Like...like an It," Danny said, feeling a tear trickle down his cheek. He didn't even know when his eyes welled up. Slowly, as time went on in the facility, he found himself allowing a few tears to escape during therapy sessions. His therapist told him it was healthy, that he was healing. He was unsure.

"Yeah?" the therapist pressed.

"Yeah. I mean, I  _knew_  what was going to—to happen. Like, I always knew it was a possibility. I'd almost been taken by them so many times before, and then I went and got myself revealed on the news. So now they knew where...oh my god, they knew I  _lived_. They knew...I knew it was only a matter of time—" his voice broke. He sniffed a few times and wiped his eyes before continuing, "I guess I just wanted...hoped they would turn a blind eye now that they knew I was an actual...an actual kid. But...when they said that...I just knew it was no different. I was still an It. But now I was an It with a home address."

"I know you've heard this so many times from me Danny," the therapist said. "But you didn't deserve what happened to you. You're not an It, and you did not deserve to be treated like one."

"I...I know," Danny said, sniffing once again. "I just...I don't know…"

"What don't you know, Danny?" the therapist inquired.

"I know they were wrong. I really do," Danny said. He had been saying ghosts had emotions since his inception as one. "I was just...I was so alone. And scared."

"It's terrifying when your country turns against you like that," the therapist supplied.

"Yeah," Danny said. "I was alone. All because I'm a fucking halfa."

He turned away, staring at the white wall. His vision dissolved, and he was back in Fenton Works. Only, the scene was different. Broken picture frames littered the ground. Next to them, a broken urn. His dead grandmother who he'd never met spread across the floor. The whir of an ecto-gun caught his attention, and he turned to see the head agent holding a gun pointed directly at his skull.

"Come with us, ghost," the agent said.

His mother was sobbing. Three other agents had physically restrained her and pinned her to the floor. Her face was bruised and she had a gash along her forehead. His father was pale and sweating, his hands cuffed behind his back. Several men gripped his arms, holding him back. A gun—a human gun—was pressed up against his temple.

More agents had poured into the home as soon as the head agent pressed a button on his earpiece. A distress signal, Danny vaguely recognized the motion. His head felt like it was filled with dense smoke, although he was fairly certain the agents hadn't filled the room with any toxic substance. And yet, he watched the scene unfold in front of him as if it were a dream. The agents stormed into his house, his parents were defenseless, and he couldn't do anything.

Oh god, please wake up.

"Ghost," the agent snapped. "I will not ask again. Come over here or we will be forced to shoot."

His legs shook. Out the window, helicopters flew above their house outside of a massive green dome which Danny had no doubt was configured to his specific DNA. He glanced over to his mother's hysterical form. Mom. Always so confident. Reduced to the floor with multiple GiW agents pinning her arms to her sides.

"Danny," his father whispered. "I love you."

His legs gave out. Almost immediately, he felt something snap around his neck. His fogged brain only had a moment to panic before his entire body surged with electricity.

In the distance, he heard Jazz scream.

It didn't matter. Rough hands quickly cuffed him before they gripped his elbows and dragged him through the front door of his home. The fresh air hit his face, and he lifted his head to see his front door getting further and further away from him.

Home. The place he'd always felt  _safe_.

Torn away. Because he wasn't human.

The agent dragged him down the concrete path to his house. Out of impulse, he jerked to the side. The agent dropped him, startled, and Danny's head connected to the ground in full. Light exploded before his eyes, and his clouded dissociation was replaced with a flood of pain.

"Danny!" his father's hoarse voice broke through his thoughts. A gunshot fired, and Danny's core once again surged with adrenalin. He yanked, willing his core to override the GiW tech. It had worked once before, hadn't it? If he could do it then, he could do it now…

Electricity flooded his senses, lighting his bones aflame.

"Ah-ah-ah!" the deep voice of the main agent came into his ears. Danny was picked up and thrown into the back of a gray metal truck. Through his hazy vision he could just make out the smirking form of the main agent.

The GiW agent put a hand on the metal door. "I wouldn't be using that nasty ghost side if I were you. Ectoplasm is a disease, ghost. And we fully intend to eradicate the Earth of this disease, starting with you. I hope you enjoyed your time pretending to be human, because this is the last time you'll ever see the outside world. Welcome to hell, dog."

* * *

"The trauma we experience in our lives has a deep impact on the way we view ourselves," the therapist addressed the group. She was a thin woman, whose relatively average female height was overshadowed by the towering male teens around her. Her curly black ringlets were pulled into a tight ponytail on top of her head, which further accented her sharp facial structure.

Of the therapists Danny had encountered during his inpatient stay, she was one of his favorites. She  _got_  him in a way most other therapists in the facility didn't. Not that the other therapists were bad—of course, they were all great in their own right—but there was something different about her that Danny was immediately drawn to.

She pushed up the sleeves of her purple sweater and continued, "Sometimes people talk about feeling detached from others, feeling like they purposefully separate themselves from the people around them. Isolate themselves."

Danny crossed his arms, slouching down in his chair. His eyes burned holes through the floor. She was always so so accurate.

"This can impact how we view ourselves. And the longer we isolate ourselves from the people who love us, the worse our self-image becomes."

If it weren't for the chip in his neck that disabled his ghostly powers, Danny might have turned invisible right then.

"Let's go around and talk about times where we isolated ourselves from the people we were close to, and how that affected our self-image. I'll go first." She glanced around the room to make sure everyone was focused before saying, "When I was a teenager I started isolating myself from my friends because I thought they didn't care about me. It affected the way I thought about myself—my self image—a lot. At the time I viewed myself as unworthy of my friendships."

Danny slumped down in his chair. Even when recounting a painful time in her life, she sounded self-assured. Grounded. Everything Danny wanted to be and more. Everything Danny knew he could never be.

Not after what happened to him.

"Charlie, would you like to go next?"

Danny heard rustling and looked up. A tall, redhead boy had adjusted his position and took a deep breath. He couldn't be older than sixteen. Danny recognized him as someone who had been a patient for longer than normal, like he was.

The boy started, "I guess I isolated myself from my mom. When the guys at school all figured out I was gay and then everything blew up with my dad—it was just hard, you know? And my mom—I just didn't wanna tell her why I wasn't hanging out with my friends or going over to my dad's place anymore. I just didn't...wanna deal with that. I was...afraid of making her sad. I just preferred to be sad by myself, you know? But at the same time, I knew I was making her sad by not talking to her anymore. But I just didn't know what else to do."

"And how did that make you feel about yourself?" the therapist asked.

The boy frowned. "I just thought I was horrible I guess. I couldn't stand myself. I mean, that's how I ended up here."

The therapist nodded empathetically, "That's really difficult. Thank you for sharing. Miguel, would you like to go next?"

"Uhh," the hispanic boy froze, his eyes darting to his lap. He was a new face in the circle, having only just arrived yesterday. He crossed his arms, his leg bouncing in distress. "I, uh…" he shook his head. "No."

"That's alright," The therapist said, her kind smile never wavering. She turned to the next boy.

Danny couldn't help but stare at the hispanic boy. He was... _shit, that was me_.

Three weeks. That's how long he's been in the inpatient facility. It was also the amount of time he was held in the GiW facility. Three weeks.

His memories of the first few days in the adolescent hospital were incomplete. They existed in fragments, small moments of a puzzle with too many pieces missing. A hand, giving him white pills. The scraping of a chair being pulled away from the table. The small bout of panic that gripped him when he woke up the first day in a strange bed. A gentle smile, prodding him to talk with a,  _'it's okay to feel, Danny.'_

In the same length of time it took for the GiW to break him, he was...still broken. Hospitalized. Under twenty-four hour surveillance. But now he could remember more. He knew what he ate for breakfast that morning, and he remembered picking out a red shirt to wear that day. And unlike when he was first admitted, now he could participate during group therapy sessions. Even if he wouldn't speak unless asked, having the ability to  _talk_  in front of the other patients wasn't something he could do three weeks ago. It made his stomach tie in knots, but he could  _do_  it now.

"...My sister was worried the most, I think," a nasally voice faded into Danny's musing. "It got to the point where she would text my friends about me. Ask them if I'd hung out with them recently or whatnot. Oh god, I was so pissed when I found out she was doing that. I—this is going to sound horrible—but I smashed her phone into the wall. Screen shattered, she was screaming. And I just stormed out of the house."

Jazz did a similar thing when Danny got back from the GiW. She was constantly texting Sam and Tucker, asking them to come over because Danny wouldn't talk to Jazz. Only, as they soon found out, Danny wasn't talking to  _anyone_.

"Danny," Sam said in a clear attempt to get his attention. They were sitting on his bed. Danny didn't remember letting them in his room. He wasn't sure how long they've been here. He hoped they didn't come over to play Doomed. Danny wasn't really in the mood to play Doomed right now.

"Sorry," Danny said, unsure as to what he was apologizing for. He must have spaced out again. He didn't remember letting them in though.

Sam and Tucker's eyes met for a brief moment. A silent conversation passed between the duo, one that Danny couldn't decode.

Strange. He usually had no problem understanding their unspoken expressions.

"You're fine, dude," Tucker responded a beat later.

Danny's dazed expression lingered on them a moment longer, before he blinked and responded with a delayed, "Oh. Okay." His gaze drifted back to his wall, and he studied the chipped paint. The years of explosions and failed technological experiments, courtesy of his parents, did little to maintain the spotless condition of their house when they first moved in all those years ago. Small cracks appeared at random on his otherwise plain wall. He reached a hand up and began to trace the imperfections.

Sam cleared her throat. "So Jazz let us in."

A flicker of annoyance interrupted Danny's daydreaming. He was annoyed, right? He...he couldn't remember why. He realized his hand had slid off the large crack in the paint he was tracing. That was no good. He would have to start over again.

"Jazz is really worried, Danny," Sam said, her voice tense.

Danny snorted. As if  _he_  wasn't already aware. She only came up to check on him—as she called it—twenty times a day. "I'm fine."

"No, Danny," Sam said. "I know you just got back and you're still...adjusting...to being home but…"

"We're worried," Tucker cut in.

"We all are," Sam whispered, her tone wavering.

Danny froze. Sam was the strong one of the three of them. Something was wrong. Why was she talking like that? This wasn't right. She was talking about him, wasn't she? Danny hoped she wasn't stressed about him. He was dealing.

"We've been trying let you tell us what happened at your own pace," Sam said. "We don't want to push you, and we're still not trying to push you. Really, you know we care about you so much. We're always gonna be here for you."

"But dude, you  _godda_  clue us in," Tucker stated, his voice blunt.

"I…" Danny said, his hand drifted up to his hair. "Nothing...nothing happened."

A beat of silence.

"What do you mean?" Sam pressed, the previous soft edge in her voice gone.

Danny tilted his head, his eyes meeting Sam's. "Nothing happened."

"At the...the facility?" Tucker said, his voice cracking in alarm at the end.

"Yeah," Danny bobbed his head. "Yeah. At the facility."

"I hope you don't expect us to believe that bullshit," Sam said.

"Nothing happened," Danny reiterated.

"Danny please," Sam pleaded. "You're not even going to try?"

"I'm fine."

Sam looked  _betrayed_. "Danny! We're your best friends! You're just going to block us out?"

"Sam, calm down," Tucker hissed, his hand lightly touching her arm.

Sam snatched her arm away, anger decorating her features. "No, I can't let this go, Tuck. Danny comes home, doesn't leave his room in days, and is just going to expect us to believe that nothing happened? That's bullshit, Tuck! That's complete and utter—"

"Danny?" the kind voice of the therapist pierced through his memories.

Danny blinked. Right. He was in group therapy with the thirteen other teens in his unit. They were discussing moments of isolation. Times they had pushed other people away, as if his entire half-life as Danny Phantom wasn't one big moment of isolation.

"Danny, would you like to share a time where you isolated yourself from a loved one?"

His mouth dried instantly, and he felt heat rise to his cheeks. When Danny first gained the ability to talk during group therapy he assumed that, as time progressed, talking about Phantom stuff during group therapy would get easier. But now he knew better. It never got easier.

"Danny?" the therapist prodded softly, "Do you think you isolated yourself from your loved ones before coming to the hospital?"

"Yeah," he forced out. He licked his cracked lips. "I did."

"How?"

"I…" Danny pulled at his brain for words. He tried to ignore the way his hands had started shaking. All the other teens here had such believable, normal issues that fit right in during group therapy sessions. Even though each life story was unique, all of the patients shared a certain level of  _humanity_  in their experiences. A humanity that Danny and all his experiences didn't share. It made talking during group therapy sessions that much harder.

Because no matter how hard he tried, he wasn't...human. No one could ignore that.

He let out a shuddering breath, wincing at the random shooting pain in his ribcage. Nerve damage, he'd been told by his doctor. From...no, don't think about it.

"I got home and I didn't...I never talked about it to anyone. I'd stay upstairs all the time in...in bed. You know when I first came home, my mom hugged me. I was...Oh yeah, I was in the hospital. Not here, the other one. The main one. And, yeah...and she—uh, hugged me. And you know what happened?" he looked up at the other teens in the room. They all stared intently at him, grasping at each word like they'd never hear Danny Phantom speak again.

A flicker of anxiety at being the lone voice in the room gripped him, but he shoved it aside. He needed to power on. His therapist told him the more effort he gave at getting better, the sooner he could be released.

"Nothing happened," Danny said, his own self-loathing taking over his voice. "I felt nothing at her. She was my  _mother_  and I felt  _nothing_. What kind of monster gets a—a hug from their mom who they weren't sure if I...they'd ever see again and just feels nothing? I mean, I—I know she did nothing wrong. But I just. I don't know. I don't know what's...what's  _wrong_  with me. She's my  _mom_." Danny's voice cracked. He shielded his face from view.

Coming home had been infinitely harder than he'd been expecting. His core was screaming at him to  _protect_. Protect his family from feeling the pain of his experiences, protecting his friends from his broken mind, protect himself from his own flashbacks. The GiW had destroyed  _everything_. His friends and family couldn't look at him the same way anymore. His brain hardly managed to pull itself together long enough to get a single sentence out. His body had been torn up leaving him with excessive scarring and permanent nerve damage. And his core. They'd...they'd touched his core.

"Being separated from your family is extremely taxing, Danny," the therapist said. "It makes it very stressful and confusing when you come back. Your brain doesn't understand how to react."

They touched...

"And you're not a monster," a new voice added in. "You're recovering."

...his core.

"Danny?" The therapist asked.

His core. They took a piece of it away. They used a needle and took it away. It was  _his_  and they  _took it_.

His chest spasmed. He winced and gripped his shirt with a hand, hardly feeling the pressing of his fist against his chest. How could something be so numb on the outside but hurt so much on the inside?

"Danny?" The therapist repeated.

How could they have done this? They touched his  _core_. They violated him. It was his and they...they...

"Yeah?" Danny said, his dazed eyes shifting up to his therapist.

She frowned. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, blinking. At her unconvinced glance he quickly added, "Sorry, it's—uh, my chest."

"Do you need me to get a nurse?" she asked, her expression tight with worry.

"It's fine now," he answered quickly. "It passed."

"Okay," she said, hesitating. "Alright. Justin, would you like to go next?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to fellow writer and linguist imekitty for helping me through this chapter! A lot of my ideas were hard to translate down onto the paper and she was an awesome soundboard for me to talk to, as well as helping to edit the chapter to help with flow and dialogue and stuff.
> 
> She also convinced me to continue past the two chapters that I'd planned to do. I'm not sure how long this fic will be, but you can expect more!
> 
> I had to do a TON of research for this chapter and I talked to hella people in the phandom who have had experiences in inpatient facilities either by working there, attending them, or having family/friends involved in them in any way. I want to thank everyone who allowed me to ask them questions and provided me with the most accurate vision for what it's really like on the inside. I learned a ton and I hope I maintained as accurate of a chapter as I could!


	3. Names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a long one!

His chest hurt. His legs shook. Just one foot in front of the other. He had to. He had been through worse than this, hadn’t he? He squeezed his eyes shut. He could handle this. But his breathing was starting to get ragged and...

Ugh. His legs...couldn’t...

No…

“You’re doing so good, Danny.” A kind female voice broke through his clouded brain. “Just a little further…”

“Hurts,” he grunted.

“Ok, let’s sit down, then,” the woman said.

He felt something tap the back of his legs and found himself all but collapsing in the wheelchair.

Danny pressed his lips together, glaring into his open palms like they were the hands that messed him up beyond repair. After a tense moment of silence, he opened his mouth. “I don’t understand. I should be fine by now.”

“Danny, you’re healing at an incredible rate given the amount of stress your body has undergone. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes and steeled himself to stand back up. “I just...I need to do this. I can’t spend my life in a wheelchair. I need to get better. I _have_ to.”

“And you will.” The physical therapist made her way around the chair. She stood in front of Danny, arms crossed and an inquisitive look on her freckled face. Danny studied her face, noting her thin eyebrows and expressive green eyes. She’d introduced herself to him on the first day they’d met, and he had also  heard her name from several other people after that. But no matter how hard he dug in his mind for her _name,_ his brain was blank.

The doctors told him—well, actually, they told _his parents,_ but he’d been in the room anyway—that he had minor brain damage. It, like everything else, would get better with time. They’d reassured his parents. His parents had cried, but Danny lay in his hospital bed unmoving. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him _that._ He _knew_ what was wrong. What was missing.

Forgetting bits of conversation, forgetting what he ate for breakfast, forgetting what day it was—those had been the obvious signs. The signs that he couldn’t hide from his parents or his sister, who regarded him with sad eyes every time he repeated a question or asked _yet again_ what time it was.

But there was another, more subtle sign of the damage to his mind. One that he didn’t notice at first, one that only made itself more apparent as time went on. One that frustrated him to his core and that he tried desperately to hide from the world.

Names.

No matter how many times someone told him their name, no matter how many times he heard it in passing conversation, he couldn’t commit it to memory. He noticed it first with his nurses, who he saw every day. They were amazing, caring people who treated him with as much dignity and respect as they would treat each other. And for that, he was grateful. But every time he would try to put a name to their face…his brain would draw a blank. He _couldn’t_ do it.

His therapist, his doctor, his physical therapist, even the patients that he ate lunch with every day, he had _nothing_ to call them by.

And that _killed_ him.

The physical therapist shifted, putting most of her weight on one of her legs. “But right now you need to sit. Your chest isn’t completely healed yet, and if we stress your body out too much, you’ll only end up hurting yourself. We need to take this slow, Danny. Slower than you’d like, but it’s the only way to do this. Anyway, most people in your position wouldn’t be out of the chair for months, if not years.”

“Most people in my position would be dead,” said Danny stiffly.

The physical therapist shrugged, her eyes darting up to the ceiling. “Yeah, well. Small blessings, I guess.”

Danny clutched his chest. “I’m gonna get those one hundred feet before I go back to Casper High.”

“That’s only one week away,” she remarked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah. But I can do it.”

The physical therapist stared at him for a moment before she shook her head and sighed. “Danny, I—”

“Clarice?” a deep voice sounded from the entryway.

Danny tensed, his fight or flight senses activating out of nowhere. _Calm down, Fenturd,_ he tried telling himself. _You’re safe. You’re at your PT appointment. Nothing’s going to happen._

“Can I borrow you for a second? This form isn’t right,” the man said, his voice just inches behind Danny. It reminded him of...it almost sounded like...

The blood drained from his face and ragged breath escaped his lips. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair as his eyes stared unseeing in front of him. The white, fluorescent lights were suddenly blinding. _Stop shaking, stop shaking._

The physical therapist’s eyes widened as they flickered down to Danny’s trembling form. “Uh, Michael—”

“Oh!” the man exclaimed, turning to face Danny. Except it wasn’t the male physical therapist. It was the glaring image of Operative O.

He sneered down at Danny and wiped a fleck of ectoplasm from his otherwise pristine white suit. “Ectoplasm is a stain on humanity,” he growled, his deep voice digging into Danny like a hot knife. “I will rid the world of it, dog.”

_It’s not him. He’s not here._

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“If you had just behaved, ghost, I might have let you keep your legs,” Operative O said, his voice dripping with slime. “We tried to be nice. You brought this on yourself.”

Danny was on the tiled floor. It was cold. Damp from his ectoplasm. They’d kicked him over so he was lying on his stomach at some point, presumably bored of beating his face and chest. His head was turned to the side, mouth open like a fish as he tried to suck in any air he could through ragged breaths. Ectoplasm dripped out of his mouth, forming a small puddle on the floor.

He was shaking, sweating, his body racked with pain. _No! No! Please don’t. Please don’t,_ he wanted to say. But he couldn’t speak.

In the distance, he heard the muffled voice of his physical therapist. “It’s okay. Can you go get a nurse for me?”

Operative O leaned down, his eyes gleaming. He held up a metal baseball bat. “You’ve left me no choice, dog.”

_SNAP!_

“NO!”

“Danny?” a face appeared in his fogged vision. “Danny, what’s going on?”

Danny’s eyes latched onto the blurry face of his physical therapist, blinking until she came into focus. Her red eyebrows were raised high into her freckled forehead. Her green eyes pierced into his. “Danny?” she repeated.

“I—” He coughed, as if trying to expel the phantom pain that flared in his back. He gasped out, “My back!”

A look of alarm spread across her face. “What about your back, Danny?”

His knit his eyebrows together, trying to piece together his broken memories. “They—it’s...it’s broken...they broke it…”

To his utter confusion, she relaxed. “Yes, Danny. You’re at PT right now because we’re trying to help fix this.”

“I’m—I what?” Danny’s hands shot to grip his hair as he searched his brain, grasping at...something...something to _remember._ Wisps of “T-12 level break” and “paraplegia” flickered through his mind. His panicked expression morphed into a look of horror as his eyes shot down to his legs. He lifted a hand off his head and let it hover over the numb limbs and froze. Snapping out of his stupor, he yanked his arm back up to his chest, curling the fingers in protectively. No...he wasn’t...was he?

“You’re getting so much better though. You’re walking now and everything, Danny.”

“Yeah,” he said through a shaky breath. “Incomplete.”

“That’s right.” The physical therapist bobbed her head, the light reflecting off of her soft cheekbones. “The break was incomplete, so that’s why you’re here learning to walk again. You have enough motor function in your legs to essentially retrain your body.”

“Oh.”

“Hey Danny, what’s going on?” came the voice of an older woman. Danny looked over to see the kind expression of one of the more senior nurses still working at the hospital. Her light brown hair, speckled with gray, was cut in a short style that accentuated her curls. He searched through his brain for her name...he must’ve known it, right? He saw her all the time. He was sure he’d heard it before….

But nothing came to him.

She peered at Danny through her round glasses. “Bad day, huh?”

The physical therapist craned her head up to look at the nurse. “Michael didn’t realize Danny was here. He came over to ask a question.”

The nurse hummed in response. “Sorry about that, Danny. Michael can be pretty unobservant sometimes. You doing okay?”

“I...yeah…” Danny said, swallowing thickly.

“I think he’s just a little shaken up is all. He should be okay soon.” The physical therapist glanced at her watch. “Our time is almost over anyway. Can you get Danny to his room? He probably wants to get ready before school starts.”

“Yeah,” Danny breathed out, relieved at these words. On a typical day, he went straight from physical therapy to the inpatient academic classes in the morning. But today, as if the physical therapist could hear his thoughts, he desperately needed a few moments to collect himself.

He didn’t understand what went wrong. Until now, he had been having a _good_ day. He slept soundly last night, he socialized a little at breakfast, his chest hadn’t been acting up at all, and he walked far at PT.

So what went wrong? Why did everything suddenly go to shit?

No...that was too easy to answer. It was because his _stupid_ brain couldn’t handle things going well for too long. He was broken, a mess, a joke of a functioning human. He couldn’t even handle being in the same room as someone with a deeper voice without his brain imploding on itself. All because of _stupid_ Operative O with his _stupid_ bald head and his _stupid_ white suit.

Danny hadn’t realized the nurse was wheeling him back to the inpatient wing until she pressed her keycard to the locked double doors. They were a disgusting shade of teal. Nothing like Jazz’s headband, which was brightly colored and radiated exorbitant amounts of _Jazz_ energy. These doors were bleak in comparison, reflecting far more grays than blues. It reminded Danny of a swamp.

The doors opened, and she pushed Danny into the teen inpatient sector. “Welcome back,” he muttered to himself.

The entire ward was relatively small, which made sense in Danny’s mind. After all, a bunch of mentally unstable teenagers in a maze sounded like a terrible idea. Danny glanced to his left to the arts corner. It was nothing special, just a few round tables with art supplies in plastic buckets along the walls. To his right was the lounge area. That was nothing special there either, just a rug, a few long benches, and board games. Beyond that was the cafeteria.

The nurse pushed him straight across the hallway that separated the two open rooms. A few lazy eyes flickered Danny’s way, but most people paid him no mind. It was no secret that Danny Phantom got cut up by the government and had to attend physical therapy sessions at the hospital outside of the inpatient facility. It was not uncommon for Danny to be pushed in a wheelchair by some nurse, even if he was becoming more and more independent by the day. And it wasn’t unusual for Danny to appear with that ever-present dazed look in his eyes.

The nurse pushed the accessible button, opening a second set of gross teal doors to reveal a small hallway. Blue tiles covered the floor, and in the back of his mind, he recalled one of Jazz’s long-winded speeches about the psychology of colors. Blue was...calming? Danny needed to talk to the idiot who thought of _that._ The Box Ghost’s skin was blue, and that guy had caused Danny nothing but irritation.

“What number are you?” the nurse asked, interrupting his inner ranting.

Danny lifted his arm and waved it at a door to his right. “That one. Four doors down.”

“Alrighty!” she said brightly as she pushed him through the open door of his room. “Are you alright here on your own now?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice soft.

“Okay. We’re leaving for school in ten minutes, so be outside when you’re ready.”

He turned, offering her a small smile. “Thanks.”

He stared into his plain room. The room was designed for two occupants—two beds, two dressers, two desks—but the second set of furniture remained unused. Danny had asked about the vacancy once, purposefully keeping his tone light as he did, but the response he received was lackluster. Disappointing. A dismissive wave of the hand along with some ill-devised excuse about there just being an open space, and he never brought it up again. Through his three-and-a-half week stay in the facility, he’d seen other people cycle through new roommates as nameless faces came and left the hospital. Hell, the redhead even had _two_ roommates at once when he first moved in, and yet it seemed Danny’s own room was destined to remain bare.

It shouldn’t have bothered him the way it did. After all, wasn’t it nicer to have a room to himself? Wouldn’t he have wanted to be alone anyway? But, for some reason, it _did_ bother him. Maybe it was that final reminder, the final twist to the knife in his gut, that even to the people who preached how equal and deserving of human rights he was, he wasn’t human enough to have a roommate. He was a flight risk, a safety hazard. What sane parent would allow their child to room with a _ghost_ anyway? He stared down at his paper thin arms, their color so pale that he could make out the veins underneath. Disgusting, that’s what he was.

He shouldn’t exist.

He _deserved_ to be alone.

After all, he brought it on himself when he went into the portal the day of his accident. And then later when he decided to be a hero for Amity Park instead of slinking into the shadows like most other ghosts. And then again, when he was too _slow,_ too _weak,_ and got himself revealed on national television. _Of course_ he was the Guys in White’s golden prize. If he wasn’t such a _narcissist_ and just _kept to himself_ like Vlad warned him to do...

“Stop whining,” he hissed as he heaved himself from his chair, leaning on his walker. He took a moment, allowing his body to balance, before walking over to his dresser and grabbing a red Casper High hoodie.

He slowly made his way over to his bed and sank down on the hard mattress. He ran his hand through the red fabric, noting the missing strings on the sweatshirt. His mother had ripped out all the strings on his hoodies the day he was admitted to inpatient. Something about the hospital code and strings being dangerous to teens. The now undecorated garment perfectly matched his new velcro sneakers.

God, if Dash could only see him now. Wearing velcro sneakers like he was a preschooler again.

Danny would never admit this to anyone, but he was almost glad for the hospital’s strict clothing policy. The shoes were so simple to get on and off, a small blessing in disguise for someone who was only just relearning how to dress himself in the morning. Even though the hospital’s no-laced-shoes policy prevented him from trying, he couldn’t imagine being able to lace sneakers in his current state. Doing the velcro straps already took far longer than it should. As tacky as it looked, Danny would take whatever break he could get from life.

He pulled the red hoodie over his head and turned his attention back to his walker. He had been too mentally drained when they first introduced him to it to be appalled by the fact that he needed a walker. And while he didn’t exactly love hobbling around in a walker in front of the other patients, _wheeling_ around in front of them was equally as embarrassing in his mind. Here was the great Danny Phantom reduced to…

This.

He pushed himself off his bed and walked back over to his wheelchair. He slid down into the cushioned seat, undid the breaks, and left his room. Through the windows in the hallway doors, he saw the other teens congregated in the lounge area, looking thoroughly miserable as they waited to be brought down to the classroom area. He pressed the accessible button on the doors and silently prayed to any god that may exist that he wasn’t the last person to arrive to the lounge.

As fate would have it, he heard a distinct “There he is! Okay, that’s everyone” as soon as he came through the doors.

“Took you long enough,” a tall redhead commented as soon as Danny drew near. He was one of the few people who willingly sat with Danny at lunch. Maybe it was because they had both been in the facility for so long, or maybe it was because the redhead was a _slight_ fanboy of Phantom. Danny didn’t really care. As long as the kid was friendly, Danny was fine with him.

“What, no PT today?” the guy asked.

_What was his name? Kevin? Calvin?_

Danny fell beside him as the group turned to leave. “No. I, uh, got out early. So I went back to my room to change.”

“Gotcha. I was confused when the nurses said you’d be walking over with us today.”

“Yeah, well. Surprise, I guess.” Danny shrugged.

_Jerry? Chase?_

“Charlie!” came the higher timbre of the Hispanic boy who’d arrived earlier in the week. “Sit at my table today, yeah?”

Now that the brunette had been in inpatient for a few days, he was starting to open up more. He was also one of the few people Danny liked, despite being new to the facility. He was quiet, nerdy. The boy had told Danny during free time that he used to play Dungeons and Dragons with two of his friends in middle school and asked if Danny played the game at all. Danny hadn’t, much to Tucker’s despair. The brunette had offered him a shy smile at this, the first smile Danny had seen from him since the boy’s arrival, and said “We’ll have to play it some time. You know, if you’re interested.”

He was a sweet kid, truly. Danny could only wonder what happened for him to end up in a place like this.

“Of course,” the redhead said. He glanced down at Danny. “You’re joining us too, right?”

“Where?” Danny asked.

“Uh, at our table today?”

“Okay,” Danny said, swiveling around a corner in the hallway. He tried to ignore the way the hallways looked, always a pure white. A spotless, immaculate white. The tiles, shiny and pure. Untainted with his ectoplasm.

“Disgusting,” Operative O hissed, pinching a white coat splatter-painted green. The darkness of the cell framed Operative O’s face, creeping up his cheekbones and stopping just before his eyes. “Look what you did. Ectoplasm stains, ghost. I’ll need a new jacket now.”

It always struck Danny as odd how, no matter how bloodied he’d get the hallways as they dragged his lifeless Phantom form down it, the floors in the government facility were always back to their pristine white state the next morning.

“Ectoplasm stains, ghost.”

It was as if someone hit a reset button on the facility at midnight. Every speck of ectoplasm was gone. The smell of burnt citrus and that hint of lime were replaced with the smell of Clorox. The walls glittered like snow, and the floors reflected the fluorescent ceiling lights with a purity Danny didn’t know existed.

“Ectoplasm stains.”

Too bad the reset button didn’t spread its magic to his cell.

“Danny, you need some help there?” a voice asked, breaking Danny from his thoughts. Looking around, he noticed he was falling behind the group.

“No, I’m alright,” Danny said, glancing up at the redhead. “Thanks.”

Danny huffed, putting more force into moving his chair only for his chest to suddenly flare up in pain. “ _Shit,_ ” he exclaimed, ripping his hands off the wheels as if they emitted an electric shock. He sat erect, eyes wide and mouth open. He tried to choke down some oxygen, but his breathing was choppy, disjointed, and _oh god what was going on why couldn’t he BREATHE._

“Danny?” His two companions turned around in alarm.

“I—” _I’m fine,_ Danny tried to say.

A nursing assistant was on him in an instant. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” the redhead said. “He was fine a minute ago, but he just suddenly stopped. It’s probably his chest again.”

“Yeah.” The nursing assistant bent down to Danny’s level. She looked at him with steady eyes. “Danny I’m going to stand you up, okay?”

He nodded. Or, he hoped he nodded. He wasn’t sure. Everything hurt. The shallow breaths weren’t enough for him. He was starting to get light headed. The walls were so bright here. He _knew_ he wasn’t at the government facility, so why did the walls have to be so bright?

“His chest?” Danny heard the brunette whisper.

“Yeah, he gets these flare-ups now. From...you know…”

He felt the nursing assistant grip his arms and hoist him from the chair. It was almost depressing how easily she managed to lift him up. He was on a diet plan at the hospital to help him regain what he’d lost at the government facility, but still...

“Take a few steps for me,” she commanded.

He managed to nod this time as he shakily took a few steps forward. Already, the hot pain in his chest was receding. The tight muscles in his chest unwound slightly, allowing him to breathe. He closed his eyes, gulping at the air. Tugging his arms out of her grip, he placed his palms over his face and focused on staying on his feet.

The perfect distraction from the dull pain that was beginning to flood his chest.

“Danny?” she said.

He let his arms fall to his sides. Cracking open his eyes, he noticed the other teens had stopped in their tracks. They stared at him apprehensively, their previous chatter replaced with silence.

“Sorry,” he said, lowering his gaze.

“Don’t sweat it,” the redhead said. “Here, let me help you.”

“No, I’m—”

“Danny,” the nursing assistant said, her tone even. “Sit down. Let us help you.”

Danny breathed in, fully prepared to launch the reflexive _‘no’_ from his lips when he stopped. He surveyed the group of teens in front of him. They looked uncomfortable, tense, as if they were waiting for him to snap, to dig out the chip in his neck with his bare fingers, power up an ectoblast, and launch them through the walls of the hospital.

His eyes wandered away from the group of teens to the two boys— _what were their names again? Craig and Mikey?_ —who stared at him with a mix of earnest and concerned expressions. The tall redhead offered him a small smile, his hand on the side of Danny’s wheelchair as if to say, “I’m ready whenever you are!”

Without warning, a wave of _everything_ came crashing down on Danny’s shoulders. He felt like _shit._ His only two friends in this hospital were here to support him, but he didn’t even have the decency to remember their names? Not to mention, their mental health issues were almost certainly more pressing than Danny’s. They were here because they tried to take their own lives, whereas Danny was admitted because he _felt sad._ And Danny was really going to fall apart in front of them? Force _them_ to comfort _him_? All because his chest hurt a little bit?

How selfish could he be? Wasn’t he supposed to be the strong one? The hero? The one struggling kids and teens could look up to as their real-life superhero they could rely on to protect them from all the bad in the world?

And now look at him.

Utterly despicable.

Feeling more disgusted with himself than ever, he sat down in his chair and tried not to let his face heat up as the redhead gently pushed him forward. He tried not to notice the pitying side glance the brunette gave him. He tried.

 _Some hero,_ he thought miserably.

“Man,” the brunette said after a few moments of tense silence. “I didn’t realize I’d still have to come to school here. That’s so dumb.”

“I feel you, Miguel,” the redhead said, catching onto the shift in topic. “It’s only for three hours, though, so it could be worse. After tomorrow, I’ll be back to the regular school day, so that’s gonna suck.”

Well, _that_ certainly piqued Danny’s interest. Before he could help himself, he asked, “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” the redhead said, his voice odd. “I, uh, mentioned it yesterday at lunch. Finally got the okay from my psychologist. So that’s good. Except then I have to go back to school and explain why I was out for three weeks…”

“Oh,” he said, feeling a bit stupid for forgetting such an important detail his own friend told him. Embarrassment flooded through him as he was reminded yet again how _different_ his situation was from the average teen. Danny was fairly certain everyone in his school knew exactly where he was. After all, his final breakdown had been an embarrassingly public event inside Casper High complete with jocks trying to calm him down, Mr. Lancer calling Jazz over the loudspeakers to his office, both of his parents rushing to school, and an agonizing discussion the Fenton family had been avoiding like the plague. So yes, even though Danny was positive his sister would never divulge where he was to his classmates—save Sam and Tucker—without his permission, he knew his peers were smart enough to put two and two together.

But the redhead was a different story. His suffering had been a silent affair. His brain had torn itself to pieces, leaving only an apathetic teen who drifted through his day-to-day life without experiencing it. Eventually, the war inside him bubbled to the surface in the form of coming out to his father, which ended with screaming, tears, and the heartbreaking “Don’t come back until you’ve sorted your shit out!” That, combined with the rejection from his classmates, had been the final straw for the redhead. A pit stop at a Walmart on the way home from school one day, and he had everything he needed to take himself out.

He was lucky his mom came home from work early that day.

To his classmates, the redhead simply disappeared. He wasn’t dead or else they would have heard about it in an obituary. Maybe he contracted mono. Maybe he was recovering from an emergency appendix removal. Maybe he had moved in with his dad. Maybe his grandfather in Florida died and he had to fly halfway across the country to be with his family.

Nobody knew, and nobody could contact him while he was in inpatient. They were all certain to have questions when he got back. Questions that, judging by the redhead’s somber tone, Danny couldn’t imagine he would answer honestly.

“What are you gonna say?” the brunette asked.

“I dunno,” the redhead said.

“Tonsil surgery has a two-week recovery period,” Danny blurted out. He remembered Jazz’s. It was her first time taking heavy pain medication, and that’s when they found out that her body couldn’t handle the pills on an empty stomach. She was violently ill and ended up back in the hospital with an IV in her arm. “But if you have a—a...complication, then you could probably get away with...uh...more time.”

“Oh,” the redhead said. “Thanks. I might use that actually.”

“Same, if you don’t mind,” the brunette said sheepishly. “Since I’m only here for two weeks.”

“It’s not like we go to the same school,” the redhead responded.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

Danny looked up at them confused. “We’re all going to the same school.”

“What do you mean, Danny?” the redhead asked.

“Right now...aren’t we? We all go to the same school?” He brought a hand up to his head.

The redhead paused before answering in a patient tone, “You’re right. Right now, we all go to the same school, yes. But after tomorrow, I’ll be going back home, and I’ll be going to a different school. And soon you and Miguel will also go home and go back to your own schools, too. Since we live in different towns.”

“Oh,” Danny said. He wasn’t sure if he understood that or not, he kept it to himself.

“Though, speaking of hell…” the redhead muttered, pushing Danny through a wide doorway to reveal the hospital classroom. It was rather average-looking, with a blue rug covering the floor and light pouring in from the large windows. Aside from the this-room-was-recently-renovated look the classroom had, the only real difference between this room and a typical classroom at Casper High was the use of dark wooden tables rather than individual desks. Apparently, it was to promote collaboration during completion of assignments. The therapists wanted the teens to work _together_ and learn to ask _each other_ for help with their math problems. Danny didn’t really see a point, but he didn’t voice this opinion to any of the psychologists. Even for him, a C-average student, these assignments were rather easy.

Not that he was complaining. If the hospital wanted to give them algebra review, short poems to analyze, and easy science articles to read for three hours a day to meet the public school attendance policy, that was fine by him.

The redhead steered Danny over to the table closest to the windows and parked Danny alongside the table. The brunette went to remove one of the wooden chairs to make room for Danny’s wheelchair.

“Wait,” Danny said, gripping the wooden table. “Leave it. I’m fine.”

The brunette glanced around nervously. “Uh, are you sure? You—the nursing assistant—”

“Don’t worry, Miguel,” the redhead said, waving the black-haired boy off. “He’s fine.”

Danny felt a small swell of warmth at the redhead’s assurance. He stood, leaning on the table for support, and shuffled over to his wooden chair. He spared a glance over at the brunette— _Miguel, right? Or did they say Michael?—_ who regarded him with an odd, pained expression. Self-consciousness overtook Danny, and he made a special effort to sit down in his seat as fluidly as possible.

“Alright, class,” the teacher said. The awkward tension at Danny’s table dissipated immediately as their attention was pulled to the whiteboard. With neat blue letters, she printed something at the top of the board. _Mrs. Reyes._ Recognition sparked in Danny’s brain as he read her name. And for the third week in a row, he tried to commit it to memory. _Mrs. Reyes._   

“Today’s math lesson is going to be review for most of you. We’re going to be doing some geometry today! Specifically, we’re going to be working with triangles. I’m going to pass out your worksheet, and then we’ll do the first few problems on the board before you guys finish the worksheet at your table.”

The class collectively groaned as the teacher— _Mrs. Reyes_ —passed out the math worksheet. Danny picked up his worksheet, glancing at it. It didn’t look _too_ bad. Pythagorean theorem, some work with fractions, and a few problems centered around angles. All in all, not terrible. And thankfully things he’d already seen in Casper High’s math class, as absent as he’d been his freshman year.

Regardless, he tried to pay attention to his teacher _._ Everything he did—or didn’t do, for that matter—was reported to his psychologist. If he was unable to pay attention in school, they may push back his release date. As it stood, he was set to be released after four weeks in the program. But if he regressed…

Well, Danny could kiss his dreams of freedom goodbye.

The te— _Mrs. Reyes_ —drew a small box around the last example solution on the board. “Okay, students! Now I want you to work with your table to finish the worksheet. I’ll be floating around the room, so wave me over if you need me!”

Danny stared at her for a moment. How could she be so happy in a place like this? Working with depressive, angry teenagers all day?

“Hey, why do you think she’s here instead of a regular school?” Danny found himself asking.

The redhead looked taken aback by the unprompted question. “I dunno. Maybe she’s just a nice person. Why did _you_ dress up in a jumpsuit and fight ghosts from attacking people every day?”

Danny froze, his gaze locked into the redhead’s strong eyes. This was a test, he realized. A test that had a rather simple answer.

Danny could just say it was his ghost obsession. Obsessions _were_ fairly public knowledge, anyway, even if a small yet loud group of critics liked to say otherwise online. And it didn’t take too long of an observation to figure out what a ghost’s obsession was, even a halfa like Danny. Even if his obsession wasn’t necessarily as strong as a normal ghost, it was still everything that _made_ his identity as Phantom. The silly “hero voice” he used to calm down children, the quirky personality, even the lame puns he made while fighting ghosts. They were all tactics he used to _protect._

But… “I don’t know,” Danny said, shrugging. “It just seemed like...the right thing to do.”

But obsessions were personal. Private. Ghosts, as in-your-face as they were about their _own_ obsessions, were also equally as sensitive about them.

It was a paradox. Truly. One Danny couldn’t fully put into words. At least, not in an attempt to explain it to a random human. It was one of those instinctual, unspoken laws that governed the ghost zone. Sure, The Box Ghost quite literally had the word _box_ in his name, and he did carry boxes with him almost 24/7, but Danny would _never_ think to say the words, “You’re obsessed with boxes.” At least, not to his face.

Obsessions were unspoken. Understood, but never told. Sam and Tucker once made the mistake of insinuating what his was, and Danny reacted by tossing his lunch in the trash and hiding invisible in the library for the rest of the lunch period. He apologized later—his face red with embarrassment—and they did too, but the topic was never brought up again. And neither was his reaction. Danny truly didn’t _know_ why ghosts were sensitive about this discussion or any discussion related to their death or personal identity, but they just _were._

And, judging by the intrigued looks from the two other teenagers sitting at his table, this conversation seemed to be headed towards a dangerous discussion.

“Are you gonna go back to being Phantom when you leave?” the brunette asked.

Danny winced.

Yup, he was right.

“I...don’t know.” Danny responded quietly. “I guess, you know, if I can. Probably. So, I’m looking at this problem, and it uses fractions and I—I’m just not sure how to...to divide fractions. I, uh wasn’t really paying atten—”

“Wait, does that mean you’ll be able to get out of the wheelchair eventually?” The brunette leaned closer to Danny.

Danny leaned back subconsciously and glanced nervously around the room. A boy in the table next to theirs was sending nonchalant glances their way. The teacher was on the other side, helping the table nearest to the door with a problem.

Damn, he couldn’t rely on her to make them focus.

“That’s the goal,” he said.

“Is it because of your ghost powers?” The boy from the table in front of theirs had turned around. He was tall, well over six feet, with mussed-up brown hair and thick eyebrows. His eyes burned with curiosity. “I heard ghosts can heal fast. Does this mean your spine’s gonna re-fuse or something?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said, claustrophobia beginning to creep into the corners of his mind. He fought to keep the panic out of his voice. “I don’t know.”

The guy in front of him grinned. “Man, I remember watching Phantom—er, _you_ —on TV. It was so cool, dude. You beat the shit out of _everyone!_ ”

“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” the teen at the table next to him said. He propped his elbow on the table and rested his sharp chin in his hand. “How did you even _get_ ghost powers anyways? Cuz you’re not even dead. So how does that work?”

A shaky hand went up to grip his hair. His chest was suddenly tight, and his breathing was beginning to get ragged. Through his glassy vision, he saw the redhead quirk an eyebrow at him from across the table.

“Or did you die and come back to life? Is that what happened?” the teen next to him continued, seemingly unaware of Danny’s rapidly declining state. “Were you, like, going to turn into a ghost and then they brought you back at the last second?”

Air. Danny needed air. His hand tightened its hold on his hair as his other hand tugged on his shirt. He felt like he was sucking air through a straw. Nausea rolled through him like a wave. White spots danced in his eyes. He needed...he needed…

The higher pitched voice of the redhead pierced through his panic. “Hey, dude, stop. I don’t think Danny’s—”

“What’s going on over here?”

“Nothing, we were just—”

“I don’t see much of this worksheet completed.”

“Yeah, we were stuck on—”

Danny leaned over the side of his chair and threw up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read/reviewed last chapter. Hope you enjoyed this chapter too!


	4. Dogs

“Pass the blue marker, will you?” Jazz nudged Danny.

“You can’t reach it yourself?”

“Well, I would if  _ someone  _ didn’t groan at me last time I did.  _ Jazz, you’re blocking my paper! Have you never heard of asking? God, you’re so annoying! _ ” Jazz said, mimicking Danny in a high pitched voice.

Danny’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling. “I do  _ not  _ sound like that!”

Grinning, Jazz pitched her voice as low as she could. “ _ You’d rather I sound like this? _ ” 

“Oh god, I don’t know which one’s worse.”

Jazz giggled, her laugh bouncing across the air like a skipping stone. 

Danny rolled his eyes, not even bothering to hide the smile gracing his lips. This reminded Danny of the good old days, before his life fell apart. Jazz, shedding her ‘I’m too mature for you’ role for a few minutes to relax and have fun. And Danny, taking a break from being Phantom to goof off with his older sister. 

If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend like they were at home in their kitchen. He was annoying Jazz as she tried to cook for them. Mom must have contaminated dinner again. She would do that sometimes—on accident, of course. The dinner would come to life and either try to take over the kitchen or sit sullen on the counter and grumble at them unintelligibly. Those days had been so blissful, so peaceful. They both had it  _ so good  _ and they didn’t even realize it.

But those days were long gone. And Danny was never going to get them back.

Jazz’s smile melted and was replaced by a more somber expression. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Danny. After we got the call this morning...well, you can imagine. We were really worried. Especially Mom. They really wanted to be here, you know, but they had a meeting about one of their grants today and they couldn’t reschedule. But they’ll be here tomorrow. And they want you to call tonight, obviously.”

As soon as Jazz opened her mouth, Danny’s eyes had latched onto his paper. His eyes swam as he viewed the drawing in front of him. It was supposed to be a night sky with some mountains and a river. Jazz had been full of nothing but glowing praise ten minutes earlier, but looking at the drawing now...why was it so bad? The mountains were stale, and the river wasn’t bending into the distance the way he wanted it to…

Was he always this bad at art? He tried to go back into his memory, fetch some instance where he doodled a landscape. But he...couldn’t remember. Sure, he’d pick up a video game before he’d pick up a pencil and sheet of paper any day, but he  _ had  _ drawn before. He knew it. But he couldn’t remember when. Or what he drew. Other than the doodles in his cell with his ectoplasm, but—

No. Don’t think about that.

Surely the government didn’t mess him up this much, did they? That he actually  _ lost  _ his ability to draw? No, he must have always been this bad. Maybe he should ask Jazz—or  _ not _ . That was a terrible idea. She’d never give him a straight answer.

He tried to focus again, searching for  _ something  _ that he might have drawn before the facility. Before his time with the government. Before Phantom, even. But there was just...nothing there. Except...he must have...

“Danny?” 

Danny’s head whipped up. “What?”

“I was telling you that we were all really worried about this morning?” 

He waved her off. “It’s fine, Jazz. Really. I’m fine.”

She bit her lip. “It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it. But don’t pretend you’re okay when you’re not.”

“I’m  _ fine. _ ”

“Danny, stop!” Jazz paused, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she started again, Danny could tell she was using all of her self-control to keep her voice calm. “You were really sick a few hours ago, and Mom said they’re upping your medication. So please,  _ please  _ don’t pretend you’re okay to me. Alright?” 

He rubbed his temples, his stock of patience quickly depleting. What was  _ with  _ everyone today, anyways? Getting up in his business? 

He was  _ so  _ done with this. 

Danny snapped, “Okay. Fine. I’m a complete medical and emotional disaster and I’m supposedly a danger to myself so I’m locked up here under twenty-four hour supervision and I—I can’t look at the color white without completely...losing...without having a...a breakdown. Is that—is that good for you, Jazz? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Jazz looked wounded, but she didn’t flinch at his glare. “If that’s what it takes, then yes, Danny.”

He gritted his teeth and looked back down at his bad drawing. It was so shitty. Why did he think he could draw a river anyways? Whose bright idea was that?

“You know, Danny.” Jazz’s thoughtful voice cut through his path of self-destructive thinking. “I know that wasn’t your intention, and this may not mean much to you, but that’s the first time you’ve ever admitted that anything is...that you’re not okay.”

_ That anything is wrong,  _ Danny filled in the mental gaps.  _ That anything is wrong with  _ you _.  _

“I guess...I don’t know. It’s not exactly a secret I’m...you know.” He gestured down to his underweight body and wheelchair. “I’m fucked up.”

“Danny, you’re hurting right now. That’s okay. You’re allowed to reach out for help, okay?” 

He could feel her emotions. The sadness, the seriousness, the love. If Danny didn’t put a stop to this soon, she was going to end up crying. “I  _ know,  _ Jazz. Geez, I was just making a—a...general statement.”

“Okay, Danny.” She sighed, her lips tugging downward.

Danny studied her face and her posture for the first time since before the Guys in White. Her red hair was still meticulously placed under a bright teal headband. Her clothes were still perfectly fitted over her thin body, with not a speck of dust or a single wrinkle showing on the fabric. Her skin was clear of blemishes, with a touch of translucent powder foundation spread across her face to touch up any tiny imperfections. She was, by all accounts, as put-together as ever.

But when Danny looked closely, past the touch of mascara and powder foundation, he could see the small cracks in her presentation that gave away the hell she’d been living in for the past few months. The dry skin on her hands, the slight dullness to her eyes, her unplucked eyebrows—all tiny details that were unnoticeable to the average person, but were far too noticeable to Danny. 

“Right,” he said, unsure of himself. This wasn’t the first time Jazz had tried to get him to open up to her at the psychiatric hospital. Only a few days into the treatment, she came to visit, armed with a paper bag—Danny wasn’t trusted with plastic, according to the hospital rules—full of pre-approved snacks. She buttered him up, making sure he was full of food from home, before hitting him with the questions. 

_ “How are you, really?” _

_ “Mom said you had a bad day yesterday. Do you wanna talk about it?” _

_ “How has therapy been going? Do you like your counselor?” _

_ “We miss you, Danny. And I love you so much. You remember that, okay?” _

Jazz hadn’t stayed long after that. Danny wasn’t in the mood to talk then. She tried to smile at him, but her smile wavered and she rushed to hide her eyes from him. And all Danny could do was watch as she broke away from him and left. He didn’t try to respond, to stop her from leaving, and when she brought up an arm to wipe her face, he turned away. He just... _ couldn’t _ .

And he still couldn’t, if he was being honest with himself. “You’re going to be...to be—be jealous, Jazz. They’re letting us go outside to play with  _ puppies  _ later. I think we, uh, get to take them for a walk, too.”

Warmth spread across Jazz’s face, immediately dispelling the darkness that was beginning to creep onto her features. She finally uncapped the blue marker Danny passed her and started coloring again. “Wow, that’s exciting! Where are they getting the dogs from?”

“Dunno. But that’s not important. The important thing is that...that  _ I  _ get to play with puppies, which means that it...that the universe  _ doesn’t  _ totally hate my guts.”

“I guess even the universe takes breaks sometimes, right? It doesn’t have time to hate on you all the time.”

“Well, if the—if it’s taking a break, it better...uh, it better last the next two hours. I know it’s not really the same, but…I do...I...uh...you—you remember Cujo, right?”

Jazz nodded, unfazed at his broken speech. “The green puppy, right?”

“Yeah…” Danny said, his voice trailing off. His brain felt fuzzy, and he could feel his eyes beginning to glaze over. The colors on his paper blurred together, and the slight texture to the white tables was starting to disappear...

“What about him?” Jazz pressed.

Danny’s eyes snapped back into focus. “Who?”

“Cujo.”

“Cujo...oh! Yeah.” Danny tried to ignore the way his cheeks were heating up. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Since last spring.”

Jazz tilted her head. Her red hair fell from her shoulders. “Really? It’s been that long?”

“Yeah. He’s been with Ember, though. Apparently, she had...she told me...told me she had a d—puppy when she was in, uh, in high school and she wanted...she missed having one. He still comes over to—to visit sometimes but, I, uh, I haven’t...you know...since...I haven’t…” 

Danny internally cringed. Even after trying to change the topic, he still managed to accidentally bring it back to his current situation: dissected like a fifth grade science project and locked up in a mental hospital.

Thankfully, Jazz didn’t rise to the bait. Or maybe his speech wasn’t as intelligible as he thought it was. “You’ll have to see him when you come home then sometime. And for now, you get to play with some adorable puppies! Tell me all about them tomorrow, okay?”

Danny nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll do that.”

“Sounds good, Danny. Listen, I’ve gotta head out now, but I’ll see you tomorrow for the family session, alright? Mom’s gonna call you tonight, but I’ll let her know you’re feeling better now. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Jazz stood, pushing her chair in.

For all her mother-hen-like behavior, Jazz had just enough tact to know when Danny was beginning to tire. And as a natural introvert, Danny understood that  _ need  _ for space after a period of socialization. But like a faulty phone software update, his mental social battery went from being an average length to almost nothing. Jazz, thankfully, was a pro at recognizing the signs. She knew exactly when to make up some excuse—even if Danny could see through it most of the time—and leave.

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Danny managed a small wave and watched as she was guided out of the facility by one of the staff. 

He regarded his crudely drawn mountain scene one more time next to Jazz’s...he wasn’t sure what she was trying to go for. Maybe a beach? Although it was hard to tell where the ocean ended and the sky started. For all his worries about his own art skills, Jazz was just horrendous. And a small part of him reminded him that, once again, Jazz was indulging in an activity that  _ Danny  _ enjoyed  _ for him.  _

He shook away that pinprick of guilt and stacked the two papers off to the side. Scooping up the markers, Danny tossed them back inside their clear plastic bucket.

“Did you enjoy your visit, Danny?” one of the nursing assistants said, popping out of nowhere. She grabbed the bucket from the table and stacked it on a wooden shelf.

Danny was too drained to be startled at her sudden appearance. “Yeah. When’s the next activity start?”

She looked down at her watch. “You’ve got about a half hour. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I’m just...really tired. I’m gonna go lie down if that’s okay.”

Her eyes swept over him, and she offered him a smile. “Sure, Danny. Keep the door open though, okay? We’ll come by when it’s time to go.”

“Thanks.” Danny beelined to his dorm and transitioned fluidly from his chair to his bed. He was getting faster at the transition from his wheelchair to other objects. Most of that was due to still having some function in his legs. Although, based on what the doctors had told him, he was  _ extremely  _ lucky his spinal cord hadn’t been completely severed. Especially considering his spine wasn’t stabilized until he got out of the GiW facility, weeks after the initial break. 

The three weeks in the general hospital after his release from the GiW had been excruciating. His memory was spotty, riddled with holes thanks to the copious amount of drugs the hospital had been pumping into his system. Even still, memories flickered in and out of his mind. Recovery periods from the surgeries, new stitches appearing a disappearing around his body, and all the time lying flat on the bed without a pillow, unmoving for days at a time. The doctors tried their best to save what was left of the nerve endings in his spine while also dealing with his healing factor, but no one knew how halfa physiology worked. All the detailed timelines, the  _ years  _ of meticulous study and research about spinal cord injuries were all but thrown out the window when Danny arrived.

And even worse, no one knew what exactly happened to Danny. The government records were sealed, and Danny wouldn’t speak.

Danny shifted, trying his best to get comfortable despite the numbness running through his lower half or the constant thrum of dull pain in his chest or the way the thin hospital blanket under him itched his arms but didn’t itch his legs or the fact that the walls and ceiling were white. He was fine. He was  _ fine. _

Not for the first time, he longed to lie on his side. But lying on his side only brought  _ pain  _ and he hadn’t done it since...before that fateful day in the Guys in White facility. When they took away his ability to curl up in a tiny ball in the corner of his room, tucking his legs into his chest and ducking his head into his arms, because  _ oh god everything hurt so badly  _ and sometimes he just wanted them to finish him off  _ please _ just let  _ the pain stop.  _

He vaguely remembered hitting the ground when they tossed him back in his cell that night. What could only be described as a volcanic eruption exploded in his back, spilling its lava throughout his entire body (not his legs though, but he couldn’t think about that right now). He had fought within himself, struggling with his brain to  _ please don’t pass out please don’t pass out  _ because his body wasn’t lying straight on the ground and he  _ knew  _ his spine was broken and he needed to straighten his body out or else the pain would only get worse but he was too weak and oh why was he  _ shaking  _ like this  _ he couldn’t move why couldn’t he move? _

“Danny?” a familiar voice came from the doorway.

He perked up, allowing himself a quick glance to the doorway to see his favorite of the psychologists on staff. Her black hair was pulled into its signature tight ponytail, allowing her curly ringlets to puff out behind her. She wore a calm, effortless smile that made even the toughest patients open up to her.

“May I come in?”

“Sure.”

The psychologist stepped into the room and made her way over to the bed. She tilted her head and looked down at Danny. “What’s going on, dude?”

“Nothing,” Danny said.

“I heard about this morning. You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” he said quickly. No, he didn’t want to talk about how he threw up on the ground, not knowing why he was shaking or why his entire body felt cold. Or how the teacher had to herd everyone out of the room before calling his therapist to come down to the classroom area and get him. How he spent the next hour pulling his hair out in her office, crying because  _ “the government was right, I’m such a freak!” _

“Okay,” she said. She turned and leaned against the wall. Crossing her arms, she stared up at the ceiling, pursing her thick lips in a thoughtful expression.

“Is it time to leave yet?” Danny asked, his voice tense.

“No, not quite. But soon.”

“Oh,” Danny said, confusion blanketing his tone. Were the staff... _ concerned  _ about him? He was just taking a nap, wasn’t he?

_ But you haven’t tried to sleep yet, liar. _

She made no move to leave. She stood there, fingers tapping her elbow, neck bending side to side to stretch it, just waiting patiently for Danny to make the first move. Because other than his own therapist, he knew she knew him best. She knew exactly what would make him spill.

It didn’t take long for the silence to get to him. “I think we’re going to try walking without the walker soon. Just to see if I can.”

“Congrats, Danny. You’ve worked so hard for this.”

“Yeah,” he said, allowing a weak smile to dawn his face. “I’m ready. It’s been...too long. I just...I’m sick of my body not responding to me. I just really need this.”

She hummed in response but didn’t push further.

He spoke without thinking. “You know, I haven’t slept on my side in weeks.” 

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I...they told me I could if I put a pillow between my legs. But...I don’t know...I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“Do you think you will?”

“Yeah, eventually.” Danny’s eyes trailed the ceiling. “I think I’m just...I just don’t want to hurt my back at all. When they...Operative...uh...you know, he never personally came to my...uh—my cell. Except that one time. He broke my back with the metal baseball bat and...he...um…” Danny took a breath, trying to collect himself. “He dragged me back. Back to...to...to there. Personally. And he threw me in my cell. I landed in...on...my side. I don’t even think I could scream anymore. I was just...focusing...trying to breath. You know? And he...he was just pissed. So mad. Told me…told...told me...”

“Think of this as a warning,” Operative O said, his deep voice filling the cell despite its quiet tone. He clicked his tongue as if he were dismissing a child. “Try to escape again, make even the slightest  _ hint  _ of a getaway, and you’ll get a lot worse than this.”

Danny’s eyes darted around the dark cell and shallow breaths escaped his lips. He shook, his back on fire. Cold sweat clung to his forehead. He dug his fingernails into the damp ground and, scraping together his last morsel of focus, he managed to flip his body on his back. He tried to brace himself for the flare of pain as his back hit the ground, but nothing could have prepared him for the sensation akin to a hot sword dipped in acid slicing through his body. He gasped, his mouth and eyes open in panic. Part of his body wanted to squirm—if only to relieve whatever hell was burning through his flesh—while the other part of his body knew he couldn’t. Not only was he locked in his body, but his...legs…

Where did they go?

“I plan to keep you alive, rat. So don’t get your hopes up for a painless death. Your soul was tainted the minute you invited ectoplasm into your body. You do not  _ deserve  _ death. Your soul will  _ never  _ rest. So hear me now, dog.” Operative O stepped into Danny’s cell, his shoe splashing on a puddle of ectoplasm. “If you so much as  _ breathe _ —or whatever disgusting substitution for breathing you half-breeds do—in the direction of the exit, I will make you wish you had never been born. I’ll bring you so close to the brink of death that you will be begging for me to just end you. But I won’t. I’ll sit there and  _ watch  _ you as you suffer. And I’ll make sure you suffer for the rest of your pathetic excuse for a life.”

“He told me it was a warning,” Danny forced out, drawing himself to the present. “And that...I...if I tried again...they...he—uh, I don’t...I don’t know.”

There was a heavy silence. 

“That must have been really terrifying,” she said finally.

“Yeah...I…” he swallowed, avoiding her face. “It was my fault.”

“What was?”

“I…” Danny’s breath hitched. His heart thudded in his chest. His cheeks burned. He tried to swallow that unnatural lump in his throat before he managed to get out, “It was my fault I got paralyzed.”

“How so?” she pressed.

Danny blinked back tears. “I tried to escape.”

“The facility?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch.

“Yeah,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I tried to escape. They opened the door to give me food at night. So I...pushed...knocked him out. Ran. And...they caught me.”

“Oh, honey…”

Anger flashed through him. “No. I was so,  _ so stupid! _ What was I  _ thinking?  _ I couldn’t...no one could...it was a maze...it...no one could have…right? No one could have…” 

His voice trailed off, and his eyes clawed at her face in desperation for  _ reassurance  _ or  _ anger  _ or  _ something  _ that would say  _ ‘Yes, Danny, you were so fucking stupid for trying to escape when you  _ knew  _ the Guys in White facility would be impossible to break out of without your powers.’ _

But instead, all he found in her eyes was sadness. “Oh, honey,” she said. “No, it wasn’t your fault. You were trying to  _ survive,  _ Danny. You can’t fault yourself for that.”

“I should have known better.”

“How could you have predicted this?”

“I don’t...I should have known.”

She let go of her elbows, allowing her arms to dangle loosely at her sides. “Okay, then let’s go back to that moment. When you decided to escape, Danny, what did  _ you  _ think was going to happen? What was running through your mind then?”

“I…” His eyes flickered back up to the ceiling. In a detached voice, he said, “I don’t know. I just knew I had to get out of there. I knew...if I stayed—I just...I realized that if I had to stay locked up in there for the rest of my life, I was going to kill myself. It was either I escape, or…”

His eyes moved to look straight into hers.

“Or I die.”

* * *

The door opened, and Danny was hit with fresh air and blinding sunlight. He blinked a few times, allowing his sensitive eyes to adjust to the new view. There was a small section of pavement—much to Danny’s relief—and a larger grassy area that was encased by a metal fence. Tucked away to the right was a small play area.

Danny maneuvered himself onto the pavement, pointedly avoiding the eye contact of the three women standing behind large crates on the grass. He had no doubt the volunteers were informed beforehand that he was here. He was recognizable on sight now, if his interactions with new patients were anything to go by. The redhead  _ had  _ told him that his face— _ both _ his faces—were on the news and on social media non-stop after he was revealed. 

“Hello everyone! Gather round!” one of the volunteers said. The way she spread her short arms out, beckoning everyone to be included in the circle, reminded Danny of Tucker’s mom.

“My name is Charlotte, and I’m one of the trainers here. To my right is Sue and to my left is Maria.” She paused, allowing both women to give a small wave. “The three of us work as service dog trainers. So we train puppies till they’re about two years old to be working dogs, if the puppies so choose. Sometimes they don’t wish to be working dogs, so they get adopted out to loving families!”

She looked down at the crates, her deep eyes sparkling. “In these crates, we have some pups that are three to four months old. They’ve recently been introduced to going on walks, which they love very much. They’re all very friendly, but they’re still puppies, so they’re very playful and they get distracted easily.”

The blonde woman cut in, “Yes, they’re  _ super  _ friendly and they love attention. So we’re gonna let them out, and you guys are allowed to pet them and play with them. We’re just gonna take some time to get to know each other. They’ve been in their crates for a minute, so they’re all quite excited to be out and about! Then we’re gonna put their vests on and go for a walk!”

Danny glanced around. Despite many of the teens’ tough exteriors, Danny could see their necks craning down at the crates, curiosity and excitement bouncing in their eyes.

“Okay, let’s let these little guys out of their crates now!” the head volunteer said, bending down to undo the latches on the crates. The other two women followed suit.

One by one, small puppies stumbled out of their enclosures, looking slightly disoriented at first to only perk up at the sight of grass and other humans. Some charged right over to the three woman, recognizing them as their trainers. Some dogs lazily sniffed around the grass. A few of the dogs, however, bounded right over to the nervous group of teenage boys.

The group of boys began filtering onto the lawn, grabbing balls or pieces of rope that the trainers had put down ahead of time. Danny wheeled over to the edge of the pavement and stopped, unsure of what to do next. He wasn’t strong or skilled enough with his chair to go on the grass. He couldn’t bend down and pet the puppies either, at least not without risking falling out of his chair which would be... _ embarrassing.  _

His hand twitched, wanting to grasp his hair, and he fought to keep it on his lap. If the nurses found any signs that he wasn’t stable enough for this activity, they would pull him inside. And he  _ really  _ wanted to try this. He needed to prove he was good enough to be outside with the other teens.

“Look, Danny!” the friendly voice of his favorite psychologist said. “This one’s sniffing your chair! I think he likes you!”

Danny craned his head around to see a small yellow lab sniffing the back of his wheelchair. Its nosed roamed around the black material in curiosity as to what this large contraption could be. The puppy tilted its head up to look at Danny.

Danny’s breath hitched. What should he do? With Cujo, it was so easy. Cujo was a ghost, and ghosts had a tendency to be direct about their feelings. The little ghost dog would waste no time telling Danny if he wanted to be pet or played with whenever Danny would come to visit him. But a real life dog...what was the protocol? Should he wave? Or would that be weird? He couldn’t exactly bend down to  _ pet  _ the little guy. Oh god, was he doomed to fail this task before it even started?

The puppy, at receiving eye contact with Danny, opened its mouth and dangled its tongue over the edge of its lips. It beamed up at Danny, tail wagging with excitement. 

“Wow, what a cutie,” the therapist said. She bent down, wrapped her hands around the puppy’s torso, and hoisted him into the air. She moved around in front of Danny, displaying the small puppy in all its glory. “Aww, he’s so adorable. I just want to hug him forever.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, still unsure of what he should be doing. “He’s cute.”

“You want to meet him?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Here.” The therapist plopped the puppy down on Danny’s lap. 

“Oh!” Danny’s hands shot up, hovering toward his chest. The dog maneuvered around Danny’s legs, turning around to face him, eyes sparkling with interest. In the back of his mind, Danny registered a vague pressure on his legs where the dog was. But it didn’t feel like when Cujo would climb all over his lap. He couldn’t  _ feel  _ this dog.

At his hesitation, the therapist reached out and began scratching behind the dog’s ears. The puppy closed its eyes, leaning into the welcoming touch. She grinned and allowed her dark fingers to travel along to the side of the puppy’s face.

“See, Danny? Just like this. Look, he loves it! Aw, lil baby. He’s such an angel,” she cooed. “Danny, do you wanna try now? I think he’d really love to be pet by you.”

“Oh—uh, okay.” Danny’s hands lowered slowly, hovering over the puppy. He glanced around to see the other boys happily interacting with the dogs. The redheaded teen tossed a ball across the field, his face stretched in a wide grin as the golden retriever bolted after it. Even the shy Hispanic boy was crouched over a puppy, rubbing its belly as the dog rolled against the grass.

Danny breathed out, willing his shoulders to relax. He could do this. He just had to try. If everyone else could pet the puppies, then so could he. He was fine.

“Okay,” he said, making contact with the tan fur. It was soft against his fingers, and he delicately ran his hands along the base of the dog’s skull, allowing the thin strands of fur to pull between his fingers.

The dog wagged its tail in delight.

“There you go, Danny,” the therapist encouraged. “See? You’re doing great.”

“Yeah,” Danny said in a breathy voice. He felt his chest unwinding. His mouth quirked upwards. “Yeah. Wow. Yeah.”

The puppy curled up on Danny’s lap, nuzzling its head against his arm. Danny ran his hands along the puppy’s back, his eyes wide. It was... _ relaxing?  _ Against  _ Danny?  _ It actually  _ enjoyed  _ Danny’s petting?

“Wow...it’s...yeah…” Danny said. “I’ve always wanted a puppy.”

“They make the best pets,” the therapist agreed. “They just give so much love. I think everyone could use a little more love in their lives. No matter who they are.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. 

The puppy was so calm. So peaceful. It breathed out, its breath tickling Danny’s arm. Danny rested his free hand on top of the puppy’s head, rubbing small circles into its skull. The puppy’s eyes closed in response, its body melting into Danny as it dozed off.

“Hey!” A sharp voice cut into Danny’s thoughts. “Dog! Come back here!”

Dog.

_ Dog. _

Danny’s body tensed. His vision tilted.

_ “Come when you’re beckoned, dog...or your life will be far worse than you can imagine…” _

Chills swept through him. He felt the blood drain out of his face. His lips were cold. 

_ Dog. _

_ “You need to be trained...like a rabid dog...” _

His breathing hitched. He ripped his arm from under the puppy and drew his hands close to his chest.

White walls, splattered with green as if part of a five-year-old’s art project stared at him. He wasn’t...no, he was back there. He was back there in the facility. They were testing...ugh, what were they testing that day? He glanced around for clues, to see wires protruding out of his arm, green fluid flowing slowly through the plastic tubes. It was flowing...out...no, that was the wrong direction...

The leering image of Operative O flickered into his view. “Your only use, dog, is as a science experiment. When I’m done with you, Pavlov himself will be jealous of my work.”

“Danny, careful!” The wavering image of the therapist appeared through his vision. She jolted forward, her arms shooting down. Down…

Danny felt his head tilt down. There was an animal on his lap. A puppy. Its wide eyes were staring up at him. The puppy. The...

_ Dog! The puppy, Fenton!  _

He forced his breathing to regulate, taking in deep breaths of air like he practiced with his therapist. In two three, out two three. In two three, out two three.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he whispered, “I’m not a dog. I’m not. I’m not.”

The therapist stood back up. “Oh, Danny. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah.” He opened his eyes and surveyed the scene. Thankfully, the other boys were too distracted with their dogs to notice his near breakdown. “I’m sorry, I’m okay. I can do this. I’m fine.”

“I believe you, hon.” The therapist gave him a proud smile. “You’re doing amazing so far. I’m so proud of you.”

Danny turned his head down back at the puppy, which was leaning its head against his torso. He rubbed the top of the puppy’s head, watching as it started dozing off again.

“Dogs are so precious, Danny,” the therapist said. “They do so much good for the world.”

He froze, and his initial instinct was to glare up at the therapist. Let her know that nope, she’d just crossed the line. He was  _ not  _ going there. Not now, not ever. He would take those emotions to his grave if needed.

But before he could start the process of forming a glare, a second voice hit his mind.  _ Why?  _ Why was he so  _ defensive _ about that word? Why did it get to him? 

Why was he so hurt?

The dog on his lap had done nothing to hurt anyone. It was calmly napping, snuggling into Danny’s disfigured body as if he were the best pillow in the world. It was peaceful, loving, and perfect in every way Danny wasn’t. He didn’t think that this puppy had a hateful bone in its tiny body. 

Why did the Guys in White _do_ that? Why did they have to make Danny associate a universally treasured animal with something so _dirty_? Why did they frame _Danny_ as something undeserving of basic love, when dogs themselves were brimming with so much of it?

“I’m just…” Danny started. The words were lost in his throat. “I just…”

“Take your time, hon,” the therapist said.

He huffed, as if resetting his breath would help him think faster. The Guys in White were wrong. They were wrong to think of dogs as dirty mutts waiting to be tamed, and they were wrong to associate Danny as a creature unworthy of  _ anything.  _ But it was all over now. Danny was out of the GiW’s custody. He was here now, in a safe place with a puppy sleeping on his lap. 

“I think they’re nice. Puppies are, I mean,” he finished lamely. Because how  _ could  _ he begin to explain the mess of thoughts swirling around in his brain? His mind so desperately trying to sort the GiW’s reality from actual reality? Because he was safe now. And the GiW were wrong. He was safe. The worst was behind him. It was only uphill from here.

The therapist nodded. “Yeah, they really are.”

...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Also a massive shoutout to imekitty for beta-ing this chapter! She's so amazing ahhhh please go read all of her stuff.


	5. Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terminology used in the chapter:
> 
> IEP: Individualized Educational Plan. It's a contract between the school and student/student's family (if student is under 18) that dictates an untraditional schooling need. For example, someone who is Hard of Hearing may require to be seated in the front of the room, or for the teacher to wear an FM system to help the student hear better.
> 
> PHP: Partial Hospitalization Program. Once the patient is stable enough to not need 24/7 inpatient care, they are allowed to go home from treatment during the evenings. PHP treatment usually lasts 6-8 hours per day for two weeks to a month.

Danny looked up to see all eyes on him. Oh, right. He was in family therapy. Or, kind of family therapy. Jazz wasn’t here. Apparently Danny would be too overwhelmed if there were more than two of his family members in the same room with him in the hospital, so Jazz was left to fend for herself in the wilderness that was Casper High. Danny didn’t really care either way. After all, Jazz would just cry and try to pick apart his feelings _in front of his parents,_ which was something he wanted to _avoid_ , thank you very much. It was bad enough she had to do it _at all._ Danny wasn’t opposed to saving himself from that potential disaster.

“What?” Danny said.

“How are you feeling about being transferred to outpatient next week, Danny?” his therapist asked, tapping her slender fingers against the sleeves of her emerald shirt.

“Fine.”

She nodded as though he just poured his heart out to the audience. “Thank you. And you, Jack? How do you feel about Danny coming home next week?”

Jack looked down at his lap. When he spoke, his tone was soft. “I’m happy that he’s finally going to be coming home. But…”

“But?” the therapist prompted.

“But I’m worried. Obviously.”

“Why are you worried?”

A wry smile appeared on his lips. “I just love my family too much. When they’re hurting, I worry for them. It’s my natural response as a parent.”

“What about for Danny specifically? What about him moving home worries you?”

Jack’s smile fell, and he was silent for a moment, his gaze never leaving the blue carpet below him. “I’m worried because...I don’t want to do anything that will cause Danno to panic. I don’t want to hurt him. And I feel...I know I’m not the most observant guy around, but this is a whole new territory. And I’m not just talking about the...I mean, it’s just everything _._ There’s so much I don’t know. I want to know, and I understand why I don’t, but I love you too much, kiddo. I don’t want to hurt you. You mean the world to me.”

Beside him, Maddie started sniffling. Jack wrapped an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder like he did every family therapy session. He grabbed a tissue box and handed it to her.

“And Danny? Would you like to say anything as a response?” the therapist asked.

No. What he _wanted_ to do was go take a nap.

“Uh…” Danny licked his lips. Keep it short. Practice it in your head before you say it. You can do it, just _say the sentence._ “I...I’m sorry if you—uh, you feel um...I’m okay. I’m fine. I—I’ll be okay.”

Goddamnit. Shit. _Shit._ He couldn’t even get through the sentence. He refused to make eye contact with his family, not wanting to see the anxiety-ridden expressions of his parents because he was _supposed_ to be getting better in inpatient but he still couldn’t get through a simple “I’m fine” without stumbling around like a drunken barhopper.

“Danno, you don’t have to be strong for us. We’re your parents.”

“I’m _fine_ , though.”

The therapist lowered her clipboard. “It’s okay, Danny. This is a safe area.”

This was so dumb. Why was he here again? He could be asleep. “Okay?”

“You seem unsure. Why is that?”

“No, no!” Danny held up his hands. His plan to fly under the radar was imploding by the second. “I—uh, I know. It’s just...It’s just I’m fine. You know? It’s—okay, uh, yeah…”

“Okay, Danny.” The therapist shifted her gaze. “Maddie? Would you like to communicate with us how you feel about Danny coming home next week?”

“Um.” Maddie sniffed, dotting her red-rimmed eyes with a tissue. “I’m very relieved. It’s been so long since Danny’s been home. So, so long. I just...I feel like my life’s been put on hold and I’m so _relieved_ that he’s finally coming home. I’ve missed him so much.”

Danny squirmed in his seat, diverting his eyes away from his mom.

“But I’m also so worried. He’s only been here a few weeks and—oh, Danny, I’m so sorry—but I’m concerned he’s not ready to come home. He...you…”

“What’s that?” the therapist prompted.

Maddie crumpled the tissue in her fingers. “It’s about Danny’s incident yesterday. The one in class? It just makes me so worried about him going back to Casper High because...well…”

Nope. No. He was not getting into this right now.

Trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, Danny grounded out, “I _know_.”

The therapist quirked her brow at Danny. “Yeah? What’s going on, Danny?”

“Nothing.” Danny tightened his fists. “It was _nothing._ ”

“It wasn’t _nothing,_ sweetie. You got very ill during class yesterday, which was very similar to when you got ill at Casper high. And honestly, it makes me very nervous about you coming home so soon,” Maddie said.

Danny felt his cheeks heat up. He crossed his arms and slumped down in his chair, looking anywhere but at the people in the room. He almost wanted to open his mouth and tell everyone off for forcing him to _be here_ because he _really didn’t want to deal with this right now_ and _please_ for just _one day_ couldn’t he not deal with his emotions? Just keep them trapped behind a locked door and incinerate the key?

Maddie seemed to take his silence as permission to continue. “It was my fault. I pushed him to go back to school too soon. I didn’t want to admit that...that anything like this happened to him. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. I...I didn’t even stop to _think_ about if Danny was going to be able t-to handle it all. It was— _I_ was so selfish. _I’m_ _sorry_.”

Maddie’s voice broke. She blew her nose, the sound echoing around the otherwise silent room.

“It wasn’t your fault, Mads. We all met with Lancer and the principal. We all agreed to have him attend school again when he came home from the hospital,” Jack said, rubbing Maddie’s shoulder.

The therapist pursed her lips. “Sometimes our brains refuse to fully accept certain situations because that makes them real to us. It doesn’t make you selfish or mean you’re a bad parent. It’s just our brain’s way of coping with a bad situation.”

“My brain’s coping caused Danny to get hurt,” Maddie said.

“Hmm, but it also led to him getting the help he needed, didn’t it? The anxiety attack yesterday in school wasn’t great, but compared to a few weeks ago, Danny was able to bounce back from it very quickly. He was a bit fatigued directly after, but by the afternoon, he was participating in group therapy sessions with the other teens like normal,” the therapist explained, gazing at Maddie with warm eyes.

“Still…” Maddie’s voice trailed off, the unspoken _it’s my fault_ resonating around the room.

The therapist offered a smile. “Sometimes our decisions may have poor outcomes in the moment but in the long run may lead to the most success. And yes, the past few weeks have been extremely hard for the both of you as parents. No one wants to see their kid hurting. But Danny’s _here_ , with a team of people who are here to support him and both of you. He’s safe and supported, and so now it’s time for you to allow yourself to accept what happened without beating yourself up over it. What happened at school was not your fault, Maddie. It was simply the result of a bad situation.”

Of course it wasn’t her fault. Danny knew this. Why couldn’t his mom?

If Danny hadn’t been so _weak_ , he wouldn’t have had issues in school.

He wouldn’t have had to come here.

He could be home. In bed. Asleep. Not talking to anyone. With the lights out and curtains drawn.

But right now, that sounded too good to be true. And Danny knew deep down that those nice moments in life were not for him. He wasn’t allowed peace in his life. And he would never be allowed another peaceful moment ever again. The Guys in White ensured this by gifting him with a lifetime of medical issues and painkiller prescriptions.

Danny shifted, his chest twinging unhappily. A second clonazepam sounded like a dream right now…

Wait, what?

_Focus, Danny._

Danny cued himself back in to the conversation. “...but you’re sending Danny back to school after the PHP program, aren’t you?”

Maddie shifted. “Yes, he’ll be going back to school. But not right away. We’ll give him some time to adjust, and when we do send him to school, it’ll be different this time. We know where we went wrong.”

“Can I ask what you’re planning for him?”

There was a slight pause before Maddie responded. “Well, we adjusted Danny’s IEP so he’ll be going to school for only half of the day to start, and he’ll only be studying the core school subjects. The learning specialists in the school’s learning center will be working directly with him, so his class size will be reduced to about five students and two teachers. All of Danny’s teachers are making modified lesson plans to send down to the learning center for him to complete, and they’ve all said they’re willing to come down during a free period and help him if he needs the extra help.”

The therapist nodded. “That sounds good. I think he’ll really benefit from the smaller class sizes. He seems to do well here in smaller group situations, wouldn’t you say, Danny?”

Danny shrugged, keeping his head down. This wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last time that adults talked about Danny right in front of him, like he was inept. And in some ways, he _was_ inept. At least, that’s what he told himself.

Before the Guys in White, if his parents were making him uncomfortable he could jump straight into the conversation and snap at them. He could say something teenagery like, _“Stop embarrassing me!”_ or _“Can you lay off me for a second?”_

Everything was different now. His brain didn’t react correctly anymore. Thinking took effort, talking took effort, listening took effort. _Everything_ was exhausting. And a lot of the time, he simply didn’t have the energy to engage.

He was too fragile to go to regular school. He was officially a special-ed kid. Which, if he was being truthful, he was surprised he hadn’t been referred to the learning center long ago, when Phantom first started turning school into an anxiety-filled mess. He guessed he always had decent grades before then—courtesy of being the child of two cutting-edge scientist parents with four degrees and a PhD between them—but even then, a part of him was still bitter no one had _done_ anything. Not a single one of his teachers requested he get sent down for testing or asked he receive additional help. The administration slapped the “lazy” label on him and handed out detention after detention, as if _that_ would to teach him not to fail out of school.

Well, a nervous breakdown in the gym locker room and a diagnosis of mild brain damage certainly did the trick.

“There’s some other things too,” Maddie continued. Danny heard another tissue being ripped from the box. “He’ll get time-and-a-half to complete his tests, and he’ll do his test one-on-one with a teacher aide. And when he finally does start reintegrating into the classroom, he’ll be seated in the front of every class.”

“How long do you plan on keeping this education plan active for?” the therapist asked.

Jack spoke up. “At least until winter break. We’re going to reconvene at the end of the fall term and see where Danny’s at. If we think he’s ready to start going to some more classes, then we’ll start that process. And if not, then we’ll keep the half-day schedule only. No rush, right Danno?”

Danny shrugged again.

“This seems like a thorough plan. It’s very good that you two were able to reflect about the deficiencies with the first plan and adjust accordingly. I know this time has been tough, but please don’t forget to celebrate the small victories that have happened, like gathering this IEP in such a short amount of time.” The therapist turned to Danny. “What do you think about all this, Danny? This is your education, and it’s important that you have a say in what you want your high school experience to be.”

Danny unraveled his arms, dropping them to his sides. He pressed a finger into his thigh, as if he _hadn’t_ just checked three hours ago whether or not his paraplegia had miraculously been cured, but he felt nothing.

“Danny?” the therapist prompted, her voice a bit softer.

“Um...it’s fine.”

“Did you have any questions or concerns about your IEP? Anything you wanted to ask?”

“Uh…” Danny played with the hem of his hoodie. It was clear that the therapist wasn’t going to let him off easily. A few weeks ago, they might have let him sit there silently during family therapy hour, but now Danny was stable. He _had_ to participate.

He breathed out and tried again. “Will I be going to homeroom? With Sam and Tucker?”

“Yes,” Maddie answered. “Lancer actually suggested we leave that as is.”

Alarm bells were going off in Danny’s head. “Really? I bet...I bet he just wanted to keep a—an eye on me. In homeroom. Make sure I even...I actually _showed up_ to school.”

“Now don’t say that,” Jack said. His voice was uncharacteristically thoughtful. “I think part of it’s that he wanted to make sure you’re doing okay, but another huge piece that he brought up is he wanted to give you time to see Sam and Tucker since they won’t be in learning center with you. Between school, PT, and outpatient, you’re going to be pretty busy. I think he just wanted to make sure you get a chance to see your friends too. Danno, I know you and Mr. Lancer haven’t always understood each other, but believe me when I say that he’s really rooting for you. He’s been a huge help through all this.”

Danny rolled his eyes and crossed his arms again, not caring about whatever attitude he was showing.

“He’s your teacher advocate for your IEP plan, you know,” Maddie added in.

“I _know,_ Mom.”

The therapist gave no reaction to Danny’s moody display. Danny wondered if, deep down, everyone in the room was almost _glad_ to see this bit of adolescent defiance leaking out of Danny. It had been too long since he was able to show attitude without fear of being hurt. Not that he behaved like the government wanted him to while he was locked up—God no, his defiance there led him to a wheelchair.

But this...this was normal. Well, it was as close to normal as he could get at the moment.

“There’s also the manner of planning out his outpatient schedule. Danny will be attending the a PHP program, correct?” the therapist asked.

Maddie nodded. “Yes, that is correct.”

“Good. I’ll still be seeing him for his individual sessions three times a week starting next week. And he’ll be in the PHP program for about six hours per day, five days per week. Based on our sessions, the PHP program sessions, and how his time at home goes, that number will slowly go down as time goes on.”

“How long will he be going to the PHP program before we can start adjusting the schedule down, would you say?” Maddie asked.

The therapist pressed her thin lips together and shrugged. “It really differs person to person. Everyone’s different, and everyone responds differently to the group therapies in outpatient.”

Danny’s eyes flickered over to Maddie, searching for her reaction. Did she think he wasn’t capable? That he was doomed to never graduate from outpatient? But her face betrayed nothing. She was blank, controlled.

“Is there anything we can do? As parents? I want this transition to be as smooth as possible,” Maddie said.

“The family unit is the most critical part of this process,” the therapist said. She paused, the corners of her lips turning upward. “Maddie, Jack, you both are very capable and empathetic people. As his therapist, I have nothing but good faith in the both of you that Danny will be supported when he returns home on Monday.”

Danny glanced over to his wheelchair next to the door. The object of his failure was suddenly melodic in its call to him to sit down and escape whatever the hell _this_ was. Family therapy was always his least favorite time of the week. And the torture of opening up to his family seemed to get worse each session as his therapist prodded new memories and emotions Danny would rather _keep shut._

“But is there anything specifically I can do? Please, I just want to help my son.”

“Just being there for him, as you have been since he started this program, is all we need in order to continue the healing process.”

“Mads,” Jack said, rubbing Maddie’s shoulder. “We got this. We all do. Right, Danny?”

Danny grunted, his eyes fixed on his lap once again. This was awful. This was so awful.

He wouldn’t be in this position if he hadn’t gotten himself revealed on television.

Which wouldn’t have happened if he had just _dodged_ that _fucking attack._

Seriously, how hard was it to dodge an ecto-weapon? The _noise_ they made as they let out a blast was enough of a warning that it was time to _move._

This was his fault. This was all his fault.

Now his parents had to be in family therapy with him. And they thought this was _their_ fault. When really, no, it was _Danny’s_ fault. But they couldn’t see that, could they? They thought it was their fault. They were blaming themselves and beating themselves up. But it wasn’t their fault. It was his.

Because he didn’t dodge Skulker’s attack—

It was all his fault.

—even though he could hear it coming—

He was lucky the government didn’t kill him.

—why didn’t he just _dodge—_

_It was his fault._

— _he let himself be hit—_

_His fault._

_—even if it was a new weapon, he should have seen it coming—_

Fuck.

* * *

“So, you’re leaving then.” A quiet voice cut into Danny’s thoughts. Danny swiveled his head around to see the Hispanic boy, who stood over his chair with slouched shoulders and an unreadable expression.

“Yeah,” Danny said.

“When do your parents get here?”

“Any minute,” Danny answered quietly, glancing at the overhead clock. It was technically three minutes past when they said they’d be arriving, but his parents were known for being either extremely early or extremely late to any function whatsoever. There was no in-between with them.

“They seem nice.” At Danny’s odd look, the boy added, “You know, from what I’ve seen on TV.”

“Oh,” Danny said. He still forgot his family was famous now. Danny hadn’t seen any of their TV appearances yet, but apparently they’d already retracted many of their theories, slamming the world with hard evidence along the way. All to get Danny home.

All for him.

“They’re great,” Danny mused. “Weird, but great.”

“Yeah…”

Danny’s eyes flickered back over to to the boy. His arms were pressed into his stomach, one hand nervously scratching the other. Danny squinted up at the boy his brain slowly figuring out how he should respond. Finally, he blurted out, _“What?”_

“Huh?”

“You look like...I dunno.” Danny waved a hand at him. “Something’s up.”

“Oh, I just…” The brunette pulled out a chair and sat down next to Danny. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Do you think we’ll be friends after you leave? I mean, you’re leaving now, and I’m leaving next week. Do you think we’ll still talk after I get out?”

Danny averted his gaze. “Sure.”

“Okay. That’s good. I just—I mean, I know you don’t think of yourself like this. But you’re like a celebrity and all. And I’m just some loser from—”

“You’re not a loser.” Danny glared at the table.

“Yeah but I’m not, you know...”

Danny’s glare snapped up at the boy. “You’re not what? A half-ghost?”

“No! I wasn’t going to say that!”

“A science experiment?”

“No, not even!” The teen ran his fingers through his hair, frustration clearly painted on his round face.

“Then _what?_ ”

“You’re just…” The teen shifted, bringing elbows off the table and onto his lap. “You know. You’re so _cool._ You’ve saved so many people and helped so many people out. You’re like the real life version of DnD, you know? And I get that you’re _here_ and I’m not saying that being _you_ has been easy. Because...it hasn’t. Obviously. But you have the whole world that cares about you. So many people fought for you, and you have so many people back home waiting for you. Your friends and family. All your classmates. And I just...I have no one.”

“Oh,” Danny said, staring up at the boy who refused to look back at him. “What do you mean, no one?”

“You know...I don’t have friends. At my high school. I’m not like you. I’m not part of the cool group or anything. Kids don’t talk to me, and when they do, it’s…” his voice trailed off as his eyes shifted up to the ceiling.

 _‘Cool_.’

Huh.

Danny Fenton had been called a lot of things—loser, freak, nerd—but _cool?_ That was one word he’d never been called before. And Danny Phantom hadn’t heard it in a while either. In fact, Danny couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called him, Fenton or Phantom, _cool._ At least, he hadn’t heard it since last spring. When Dash and Paulina ruled the halls, talking about how _cool_ Phantom was, blissfully unaware that he was the same loser they just elbowed into a locker. And Danny…

Danny went about his day as usual. Ignorant as to what was to come.

“I’m not cool,” Danny found himself saying. “Before everything came out, I wasn’t...people didn’t like me very much. The other kids at school.”

The teen shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. You don’t get it because you have friends. Not being the most popular in your class isn’t the same as—”

Before Danny could stop himself, all his dirty secrets were spilling from his mouth like a waterfall. “Dash—the quarterback—he locked me...locked me in those tall thin lockers. And he and his friends would lean against the door so I-I couldn’t get out. They’d laugh. And then they’d...they’d let me out. Which was almost worse. Because...because it was me versus...all of them.”

“Oh,” the teen said, his eyes as wide as saucers. And for a moment, Danny almost felt embarrassed that after the teen had come to him with his own insecurities about school, Danny had responded selfishly.

But he _didn’t_ feel embarrassed. He didn’t feel bad about stealing the spotlight _once again_ for his own problems, because _goddamnit_ this was one of the only boys who gave Danny any semblance of friendship at inpatient, and Danny didn’t want to keep up the “perfect ghost hero” façade with him any longer. If the public wanted to think his human form was an innocent angel? Fine. So be it. But this teen? Who pushed his wheelchair down the hallway when Danny’s chest had a fit? Who sat with Danny during mealtimes and didn’t say a word at the various heavy drugs he was given each morning and evening? Who colored with Danny and kept the conversation alive despite his stuttering mess?

No, this boy deserved better. He deserved the truth.

Danny exhaled. “Yeah. But they didn’t...something changed. When I went to school now. They didn’t...they didn’t...I guess it was the wheelchair…”

“Maybe they felt guilty.”

“Maybe…”

“Mine won’t be so nice when I get back to school.” The teen twisted the sleeves of his hoodie. “Oh god, and if they ever found out where I’ve been...that would be the end of me.”

“Tonsil surgery, remember?”

The boy gave a weak smile. “Yeah. Just don’t rat on me when we get out, okay?”

“Sure.”

It’s not like he _could_ rat the boy out even if he wanted to. Danny had no idea what his name was, and at this point, it would be too embarrassing to ask.

As if he could read Danny’s mind, the teen reached over the table and grabbed a loose piece of paper and a marker from the art bucket. He scribbled something down on the paper and all but shoved it onto Danny’s lap. ‘ _Miguel Cantos 817-431-XXXX’_

Danny must have looked lost because the boy’s expression immediately turned sheepish as he ducked his head down and muttered, “My cell. In case you wanna stay in touch after we get out.”

 _Miguel Cantos._ Danny repeated the name in his head. His eyes flickered back up to the small boy sitting in front of him, who was currently curling in on himself. The teen— _Miguel—_ ran a hand through his short hair, his round cheeks turning red at Danny’s continuous staring.

“Thanks,” Danny said, glancing back down at the paper. _Miguel Cantos._ He couldn’t forget that name.

“Can I ask you something?” the— _Miguel_ said.

“Sure.”

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to. But I was just curious.”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay.” Miguel nodded, hesitating. His fingers fidgeted until they landed on the hem of his long-sleeved shirt. Tan fingers pulled and stretched the material, twisting it till the cloth hid his thumb from view. “Are you the only one? Or are there more people like you?”

“Oh, uh…” Danny leaned back in his chair.

_Shit._

Well, there went any semblance of not lying to this kid.

Technically, minus Vlad, he was the only person _like this._ And even then, Vlad was ever so slightly different from Danny. Not to mention he was a total creep who had completely given in to his sick obsession with Maddie and seemed to think that killing Jack and kidnapping Danny on multiple occasions was the only way to win both Maddie _and_ Danny’s affections as his pseudo son or whatever twisted thoughts that plagued his head.

But even then, even after everything Vlad had done, he still couldn’t rat him out as being a halfa. Maybe it was his obsession talking, maybe it was the constant need to have this one-up on Vlad, but at the end of it all, being a halfa was something too _personal,_ too _private._ Vlad and Danny alike had taken their secret and guarded it within an inch of their lives again and again. Danny was the one unlucky enough to have been outed on national television, not Vlad. He fucked up, and he suffered the consequences tenfold.

Danny wouldn’t wish what happened to him on anyone, not even Vlad.

“Yeah, I’m the only halfa.”

“Oh, wow. Do you and your family know why?”

“They have their theories,” Danny said, choosing his words carefully. Most of his parents research was confidential, and he and his parents hadn’t really been able to sit down and talk about all the ghost-stuff yet.

There was also the matter of Danny not exactly being too keen on having his physiology on display to the public like he was a rare zoo animal. Nope, no thank you.

“They don’t know for certain...why I survived the accident…it—it’s speculation.”

“Oh. That’s cool then,” Miguel said.

“Danny,” a gentle voice came from behind him.

Danny swiveled around to see one of the nursing assistants approaching the pair, a warm smile on her face. “Your parents are here.”

“Thanks,” Danny said. He turned back to Miguel. “Well…”

Miguel offered him a grin.

It looked forced.

“This is it. You’re off,” he said.

“Yeah.” Danny exhaled, trying to dissipate the knots of anxiety that decided to spring into existence. “Yeah. This is it.”

“I’ll come with you to get your bag,” the nursing assistant said. She stepped to the side, raising her arm in the universal _“after you”_ motion.

“Okay.” Danny’s voice sounded distant to his own ears.

“Hey.” Miguel slowly lifted his hand, curling it into a loose fist. His face relaxed, and a real grin replaced the fake one from before. “It’s been good getting to know you, Danny. I never expected to meet you, and I never thought you would ever give me the time of day if we did happen to cross paths. You’re awesome, dude. Keep in touch.”

Danny raised his own fist in kind, lightly tapping the tan skin with his pale knuckles. He felt the corners of his lips twitch up involuntarily. This time, the assurance along with a “you too” didn’t seem so forced either.

He dropped his arms to his side, undid the breaks on his wheelchair, and pivoted away from Miguel. A final goodbye brushed against Danny’s eardrums, but he didn’t offer one in response. The uncertainty of whether he would ever talk to Miguel again had begun collecting in the corner of his mind. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak to the brunette again, it was just…

What if them staying in contact compromised Miguel’s anonymity as a suicide patient? What if the other kids in his school found out? Everyone must have known where Danny ended up. This hospital was the only one around that offered an adolescent program. It wouldn’t be too hard to connect the dots between Danny’s public meltdown and subsequent hospitalization and Miguel’s “tonsil surgery” absence.

It was just too risky. He couldn’t risk outing Miguel like that. Not after how nice the boy had been to him since he arrived.

That was it, right? That’s why he felt so conflicted about this?

“Alright, let’s do this,” the nursing assistant said, dragging Danny from his anxiety-filled brain.

He paused, tilting his head up to be met with the plain door to his dorm room. The nursing assistant gently pushed the door back to reveal a spotless white and blue accented bedroom. His bed was made, sheets pulled up under the pillows like his mother had taught him all those years ago. Decorating his bed was his duffle bag, which was packed and zipped up.

He put his hands on the metal rims of his wheels and readied himself to push forward toward the duffle bag. But, before he could move, the nursing assistant had already made her way across the room.

“Don’t worry, Danny. I got it,” she said, grabbing the duffle and slinging a black strap across her shoulder. She reached down for the walker. “You just follow me out, okay?”

He relaxed, allowing his eyes to wander around the room one last time. The white walls and ceiling didn’t bother him anymore, not like they did when he first arrived to inpatient. Sure, the dorm room was mostly white, but it seemed much brighter than the white in the government compound. The government’s walls were dim and maddening. Their white pressed down on Danny’s lungs, leering at him with hysteria.

 _You’ll never escape,_ the whiteness seemed to say. _This is your life now. You deserve it, freak._

The white in the hospital was like gleaming pages on a fresh sheet of computer paper. It was blank, yet eager to be filled with new sketches and splashes of color. The room alluded a hopeful sense of safety that Danny desperately craved.

“Well, you ready?” the nursing assistant asked.

“Yeah,” Danny said. He was ready. Maybe he wasn’t completely fixed yet—and if he was honest, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be—but he was ready to be out of here. He hadn’t seen Sam and Tucker in weeks, and they hadn’t truly hung out since before he was revealed. Sure, they visited him when he was in the main hospital and when he came home for that short stint before being checked into inpatient, but he wasn’t exactly _present_ for those encounters.

He made a mental note to treat Sam and Tucker to the Nasty Burger when he got back. For everything he put them through. Whenever his bank account would allow for it, at least.

Oh yeah, he was _definitely_ ready to be out of here.

He turned to the nursing assistant and offered her a lopsided grin, ““Yeah. No offense, but these—but these beds suck.”

The nursing assistant snorted. “They don’t look too comfortable. I’m just glad I never had to sleep in them.”

“Do yourself a—a favor and...don’t get checked in then. You won’t have to.”

“I’ll try my best.” She undid the clasps on the walker and folded it flat. “Besides, I think I’m a little too old to hang with you kids.”

“Aw, come on. You’re what, twenty?”

She rolled her eyes. “A little older than that. Nice try though. Come on, let’s not keep your parents waiting. We still have to sign you out and everything.”

They exited the boys’ psychiatric unit, the double doors hissing closed for the last time. She led him down an unfamiliar path to the lobby of the building, one Danny couldn’t remember going on when he was admitted the month before. Thinking back, Danny didn’t remember much from the first day he was admitted.

He must have been really out of it.

Seeing his parents for the first time outside of the double doors was awkward, neither party knowing exactly what to say to each other. Maddie kept turning from the front desk to give him small, watery smiles that left him entirely unsure how to reciprocate. After the fifth watery glance in his direction, he made it a point to stare down at the floor, the ceiling, the seams of his hoodie, _anywhere_ but the direction of his parents.

Jack was a different story. He was quiet, focused on getting all the paperwork filled out accurately. This attention to detail was somewhat unnerving for Danny, who was used to him being the distracted parent. But, thinking back over the past few weeks, Jack’s change had been the most apparent out of his parents and sister. The goofy, immature man was much more stoic than before. It was as if Jack had left town and his lawyer twin brother replaced him.

Danny waited silently off to the side until the final papers were signed, signaling the beginning of his freedom. Well, partial freedom. He would be back here tomorrow for outpatient. But from this day forward he could sleep in his own bed, eat his mother’s baked goods, and sit on the roof and look at the constellations with Jazz whenever he wanted.

He was _finally_ free.

The sunlight hitting his face almost didn’t seem real. It wasn’t like the sticky heat he was met with when he was dumped like a UPS package on the Fenton Works doorstep by the Guys in White after his... _residency_ with the government. Which was a suppressed memory _that_ _could stay suppressed, Fenturd._

He pressed a hand to his forehead. He hadn’t thought about that memory yet, that moment when the blinding sunlight and summer heat met his body for the first time since he had been taken away.

All he remembered from that day was the sound of the door opening and his eyes immediately snapping shut at the bright light that met his dilated pupils. A rough hand grabbed his arm—the broken one that couldn’t heal thanks to the ecto-suppressants—and yanked him out of the car. His torso hit the sidewalk and he _screamed_ as the fresh wounds on his chest burned in pain. He writhed, desperate to get off his stomach, only for his back to cry out in misery.

And then he woke up in the hospital. Surrounded by fresh linens and medical professionals working to heal him.

The concerned tone of Jack cut into Danny’s thoughts. “Danno? You okay?”

Danny’s eyes snapped back into focus. Shit, he was falling behind his parents. “Yeah, sorry.”

“You need help?” his mother asked.

“No, I’m good. Promise.” Danny gave his mother what he hoped was a reassuring smile. It wasn’t, if his mother’s persistent worried look was anything to go by. He rolled his eyes and put more force than necessary into the next push on his wheelchair, speeding past his parents.

Danny reached the start of the parking lot and glanced around, searching for the Fenton Assault Vehicle. It was never hard to spot, with it standing several feet higher than a normal car and plastered with the neon green Fenton Works logo. But much to Danny’s surprise, he couldn’t spot it anywhere.

“Where’d you park?”

“Right up front,” Maddie said.

“Huh? Oh…” Danny’s eyes latched onto Jazz’s small red car parked in the first handicapped parking spot. He swallowed thickly, his stomach twisting painfully. “Oh.”

“No ghost assault vehicle today,” Jack said from behind Danny. He felt a heavy hand hit his shoulder. “Your mother didn’t think the hospital would like it too much if we showed up with a van full of weapons. So we borrowed Jazz’s car for the day.”

“Oh. When did you…?” Danny nodded towards the handicapped sign in front of the spot.

“Um, a few weeks ago,” Maddie said, her voice tight.

“We know it’s not ideal, but it’s practical. And hey, someday you might not need it if you work hard enough in PT, right?” Jack asked.

“Right.”

“Then for now, this is just the way it is, son.” Jack’s hand squeezed Danny’s shoulder before letting go. “Now, enough chit-chat. Let’s go home.”

“Yeah...home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE shoutout to imekitty for not only beta-ing this chapter (which was a mess that required multiple days of her working her editing magic) but also for just helping me along the way with this chapter and giving me lots of encouragement and motivation. She's a gem and an amazing writer so if you want some great angsty fics I highly suggest you go read her stuff.
> 
> Also big ups to tumblr user dannyphandump for giving one last read through on this chapter and helping with the last-minute detail edits/things to think about for future chapters. They were super helpful!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and for everyone who reviewed the last chapter! I can't wait to hear your thoughts and predictions about the next chapter now that he's home!


	6. Home

Danny’s parents were both geniuses in their own respect. Danny’s father could produce groundbreaking technology out of scraps of metal and a semi-functional power source, while his mother had single handedly pushed the field of ecto-biology into the spotlight as a legitimate field of research. They were, without a doubt, two of the smartest people Danny knew.

So when the trio arrived at Jazz’s car and Danny began his usual transfer process out of his wheelchair—but this time with the help of his _parents—_ of course all hell broke loose.

Jack ordered Danny to stand only seconds before ripping his wheelchair out from under him. By some miracle, Danny managed _not_ to fall flat on his face. He leaned on the hood of the car, watching as Maddie bemoaned Jack while rushing to undo the clasps on his walker even though Danny _tried_ to reassure her that _he was fine if she would help him into the car no he didn’t need the walker if she would just help him._

 _Done_ with Maddie’s worrying, Danny launched himself off the car and onto her arm, nearly taking both of them down in the process.

“Daniel, I just can’t believe you! We’re not even off the hospital’s property yet!” Maddie scolded him as she and Danny secured themselves in their seats. She looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or amused. 

Danny, on the other hand, was in stitches.

“Daniel James!”

He choked down a second wave of laughter. “Sorry, you’re right. I should have...should have waited till we were in our—uh, driveway to do that.”

“No! You could have been hurt!”

Jack slammed his door shut. “Don’t give him a hard time, Mads. Everything turned out fine! Nobody was hurt!”

“Jack, your son almost just went headfirst into the pavement.”

“To-may-to, to-mah-to.” Jack twisted around to wink at Danny. “Besides, it’s Danno’s first day out. Let him have a little fun!” 

Maddie shook her head and leaned back in her seat. “You boys are going to be the death of me, I swear.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Danny quipped.

“I’m your _mother._ I’m allowed to be dramatic.”

“Sure, Mom.”

Jack pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road. “And we’re off, gang! Goodbye, hospital!”

Danny rolled his eyes. After all, he would be back tomorrow for PT.

“I know the past few weeks have been hard, but...I’m glad you went here,” said Maddie, giving the hospital one final glance. “The staff seemed so kind.”

“Oh. Yeah. It was fine,” Danny said.

Those words felt familiar—usually only used to brush off whoever was talking—but for once in his life, Danny meant them. 

It _was_ fine. For every painful memory he was forced to recount, all the hours of therapy he endured, Danny felt...okay. Well, not _okay,_ but far better than he did a month ago. As much as he despised losing his ghost half, inpatient was _good_ for him. It forced him to deal with his trauma in ways he would never have done before. And now, he would never have to go back there. 

The worst was behind him.

“You look so much better too. Healthier. You don’t look all skin and bones anymore,” Maddie added.

Danny’s feet were suddenly very interesting to him. “Thanks.”

“I know the hospital said...they said some things. About mealtimes.”

Danny felt his cheeks heat up.

She continued, “They said it was common in teens in your...position. Your father and I were told to stay on top of you during mealtimes and to make sure you eat. So I just wanted to warn you that we’ll be much more observant than you’re used to.”

“It’s fine. I know.” Danny picked at his cuticles. _Of_ _course_ the hospital ratted him out.

“But, as your mother said, you look a lot better. Do you feel any better?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, I feel fine.”

Jack bobbed his head. “You know, you gotta stay in tip-top shape if you want to get back out there and fight ghosts!”

A hint of a smile appeared on Danny’s lips. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“Get healthy enough and then we’ll be able to take that chip out of you so you can—”

“I thought we were taking it out as soon as we got home,” Danny cut in, tapping his legs with his fingers.

Maddie’s eyes shot over to Jack.

“I—I, the hospital...they told me when I got out. That’s what you—you said.”

“Danny, I know, but we...we don’t know the long-term damage on your ghost half yet,” Maddie said.

“There was no long-term damage.”

Jack and Maddie exchanged loaded glances. 

“Son…” Jack paused. “Do you understand why the Guys in White...at the end…”

Danny’s chest burned. “They wanted my core for energy.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Right. So they...removed part of your core—”

Danny flinched. “I don’t see why this is relevant.”

“Danno...” 

No, fuck this. He was told—promised—that his ghost half would be returned to him in full once he was released from inpatient. And now his parents wanted to bring up... _that?_

“It grows back. You told me that cores replenish what they lose all the time,” Danny argued.

Maddie’s fingers shook as she wiped her eyes.

“In small amounts, normally yes, the core does replenish what it loses,” Jack said.

“Okay, so my core is _fine."_

“We don’t know that,” Maddie said, her voice quivering.

“The core self-heals, true, but we’ve never seen so much energy taken from it before at once. We don’t know what that does to it long-term. On top of that, your core was extremely strained from being forced into an active state for a month. It would be like drinking only Red Bull for a month straight. Just a few cans here and there is no big deal, but drinking so much every day that you can’t sleep will seriously affect your health. So not only was your core already in a fragile place from never being able to go dormant, but then an entire section of it was extracted,” Jack explained.

Danny crossed his arms and glared out the window.

“Right now, the chip is sending electrical pulses to your core to withhold a specific amount of ectoplasm. Meaning, only a small amount of ectoplasm actually escapes from your core every day. Much less than usual. This is why your healing factor as well as general sensory input have been unaffected. And, because we as your parents wanted to play it safe, you may have noticed that small parts of you are still probably able to go invisible and intangible.”

Danny didn’t know this. He stared down at his finger, willing it to go invisible. Sure enough, after a beat pause, his finger flickered out of visibility. 

“Even though this was hospital policy for you to wear it, your mother and I were actually going to put the chip in you anyways. Because we didn’t develop it for the hospital.”

Well...that caught him off guard.

“Huh?”

“Danny, weren’t you wondering how we managed to create a perfectly functional chip just in time for your stay?” Maddie asked.

No, he hadn’t thought about it. In fact, Danny never even questioned how in the world _Jazz_ of all people showed up at the hospital with the flawless power-cancellation system specifically designed for Danny’s physiology while he and his parents were checking into inpatient. But now that he _was_ thinking about it, it did seem weirdly convenient. And odd. And not at all physically possible.

Danny’s stomach twisted. “Why did you make it then?”

“Because your core _was_ damaged. And we needed a way for it to heal itself,” Jack said.

Danny’s hand flew to his chest. It prickled at his touch. “What do you mean?”

Maddie’s eyes didn’t waver from the front window as she explained, “After the doctors at the main hospital stabilized you, we brought a scanner in to make sure your ghost side was okay. And when we scanned you, we noticed your core looked bruised. That, and with your injuries…” 

“It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, Danno.”

“Okay? It’s probably healed by now!”

Another pause. 

“We’ll have to scan you to find out,” Maddie said.

“So scan me when we get home.”

“It’s not our small hand-scanner, you know. It’s a big piece of equipment. We’d have to do it in the lab.”

His arm twitched, wanting to move to his hair. That was fine with Danny. Whatever. So what? Take him to the lab. He was fine.

Around all that ghost-hunting equipment.

His mom’s collection of biology knives and scalpels.

Their ghost-containment unit.

The vials of ectoplasm.

“Why can’t you just take my word for it?” Danny whined. Not that he was scared, though. He wasn’t scared of the lab. 

Not even a little bit.

“Because we’re your _parents_ ,” Maddie said.

“But I feel fine!” 

“Danny, I’m sorry, but this isn’t up for discussion.”

Danny huffed. His parents didn’t get it. He _needed_ his ghost half. He had been too distracted at first to notice what was missing, but more recently he’d started to feel an...an _itch_ in his chest. Every time he tried to reach out and scratch it, _something_ blocked him. 

He had ignored it for so long, able to keep looking forward thanks to the promise that his ghost half would be returned to him in full after he got out of inpatient. But now that that hope had been ripped away from him, the itch in his chest burned with a newfound desperation. 

Danny lifted his hands from their position on his legs. He gripped his hair, his chest tight. “Mom, I can’t...I need…you—you can’t…”

Jack glanced behind him. “I know this is hard. But we can talk about it when we get home, okay?”

“But I...I _need_ —”

“I know, Danno. And you will. Soon.”

No. This wasn’t good enough. His parents weren’t _listening_. He _needed_ Phantom. His parents couldn’t just load him up with loose promises. “When? When is soon?”

“Whenever we can figure this all out, okay?”

“No. That’s not—it’s not…” Danny huffed.

“Danny—”

“I—I’ll go. The lab. I’ll do it. Please, I just...I need..." Desperation leaked into his tone. He leaned forward, his eyes glued to the back of Maddie’s head. 

“I’ll go into the lab.”

She didn’t turn around.

The car slowed as it approached a red stoplight. Jack thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel and tilted his head from side to side, as if contemplating his response. 

“I’ll do—I’ll do it. When we...we get home,” Danny reiterated.

Maddie shot Jack another alarmed glance.

“Danny,” Jack started, his voice slow and deliberate. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s just...your mother and I, well, we’re not too sure how comfortable we are with you going into the lab right now.”

“Why?”

The light turned green, and Jack slowly accelerated across the intersection. “We wanted to save this for when we got home, but...there’s a lot of dangerous things in the lab. Things that could hurt you. And until we safety-proof the lab, we don’t want you going down there.”

“So? The house has—has always been like that.”

“Yes, and you’re _extremely lucky_ you haven’t been hurt before this,” Maddie said.

Before he could stop himself, Danny grumbled, “Aside from the portal.”

His parents froze in their seats, neither tearing their gaze off the road. Jack’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and the color drained from Maddie’s face, leaving her cheeks ashen and forehead gray.

Guilt swept through Danny in a wave. He immediately tried to save face with a lame “sorry.”

“No, it’s…” Maddie tried.

“We haven’t been able to really talk about the ghost stuff yet, just the three of us,” Jack said. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”

Danny loosened his grip on his hair. He dropped his arms until his fingers were resting back on his legs. “I know. I just...I need...I feel weird. Since the chip. My body doesn’t feel—feel right. It was fine at first but...it’s...it’s not comfortable anymore. I can’t...I don’t know how much longer…”

Jack nodded. “I know, Danno. But let’s talk about it tonight, okay?”

“Yeah.” Danny let out a shaky breath. “Okay. Deal.”

The remainder of the car ride was silent, save for the occasional comment about a new restaurant or news from family and friends.

Danny leaned his head against the cool window and watched as buildings passed by. Despite being gone so long, everything seemed the same. The library still had its usual crowd of people hovering outside for the free WiFi, new mothers still pushed their babies down sidewalks in covered strollers, and young professionals still hunkered down in cafés working on nailing that next meeting as usual. Danny had changed so much—his entire life had been uprooted and stepped on—but Amity Park was still just Amity Park.

The car slowed and turned into a familiar driveway. 

Fenton Works stood tall in all its glory. It, like the rest of Amity Park, remained unchanged since Danny had seen it last. The hideous Ops Center superglued to the top of the house still stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the homes on their block. And the neon sign…

Danny couldn’t look at that atrocity for longer than a few seconds without risking death via embarrassment.

One thing was different, however. As Danny settled into his wheelchair and started for his front door, he noticed something _very different_ about their entryway.

There was a ramp where the stairs should’ve been.

Something... _unsettling_ churned in Danny’s gut. Surely he wasn’t going to be in a wheelchair for _that_ much longer. A ramp was nice, but he could probably go up the stairs if he really tried, couldn’t he? He hadn’t yet attempted stairs—there were none at the hospital—but he could probably do it if he really focused. 

So there was no need for a ramp. 

Right?

“Surprise!” Jack said, slapping Danny on the shoulder from behind and making him flinch. “We don’t want anything to keep you from hanging out with your friends and enjoying your teenage years, Danno. Especially not something as silly as a front door!”

Right. That was right. Danny was being silly by overreacting to this whole thing. It was just a stupid _ramp_ after all, it wasn’t like anything serious happened.

And besides, this ramp probably cost a lot of money to build. His parents didn’t have to spend their money on something like this.

 _They could have just removed the chip from your neck, though,_ a small voice in the back of his mind whispered. _Maybe they like you like this. Easy to control. Human._

_Maybe they’ll never give you your ghost half back._

Danny shook those poisonous thoughts from his mind and started his way up the ramp. It _was_ convenient, he had to admit. And it promised a stress-free way of entering and exiting his house every day.

He crossed the threshold—noting a mini ramp on the front door—and all but sagged in relief as he saw the inside of the living room.

It was identical to when he’d left.

The couch seemed as fluffy and worn as ever. There was still a small pile of newspapers and crochet materials on the coffee table. His mother’s Science Weekly magazine decorated one of the armchairs. The walls next to the lab door still had vague scorch marks tattooed into the paint.

Danny was _finally_ home.

Or— _hold on_.

“What’s…what’s _that?_ ” Danny asked, pointing to a large metal square folded against the wall next to the stairs. 

“That’s your stairlift!” Jack said. He walked towards the metal square and pressed a button. The lift whirled to life and slowly unfurled until it touched the ground.

“My...stairlift?”

“Your father built it,” said Maddie. “Don’t worry, I’ve tested it every step of the way. It’s perfectly safe.”

“And perfectly functional.” Jack beamed down at the metal slate. “See, you press that button and it’ll open so you can just roll right up on the platform. And then you can lower the handle, and you get this switch. Flip the switch up to go up the stairs, down to go down the stairs, and put it in neutral to stop. This red button is also another brake button because your mother _insisted_ on it—”

“All the online forums said to have an emergency brake, Jack!”

“—but I digress! It’s very easy and safe. And when you’re not using your wheelchair, you can lower this little doohickey and out pops a nice padded seat and you can sit down here and it’ll take you up the stairs just the same!”

Danny rested his hands on the wheelchair, unsure if he wanted to get closer to the stairlift or stay as far away from it as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate his parents’ nice gesture, he just didn’t understand why they felt the need to do this when he could’ve easily flown up the stairs.

He must have remained silent for too long because Maddie turned to him with an anxious expression. “I know you’re apprehensive about this, but I promise it’s very common for people with spinal injuries to have them in their homes.”

She probably was right. But that wasn’t the issue here.

“I just...I don’t understand why—why you won’t let me...let me...fly.”

“Danno…”

“Danny, you _just_ got home—”

“Yes, exactly! I—I’m home. Surprise!” He threw his hands up. “I’m here! I’m no longer a...a threat to—to myself!”

Maddie looked as if someone slapped her across the face. “We never thought you were!”

There were so many things Danny could say as a response. So many things that would escalate the situation. 

But, just as he felt the fire light itself in his chest, he squashed it.

It wasn’t worth getting into now. He just got home, and if his parents felt they couldn’t trust him, they’d just send him back to inpatient with a note attached explaining how he was still a danger to himself and others, still too emotionally explosive, still too _unstable._

So instead he wheeled himself over to the couch and said, “I’m tired. I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Danny…”

“No. It’s fine. I get it.”

His mother deflated. “I know this isn’t easy to talk about.”

“It’s fine.”

“We’ll get through this.”

“I’m fine.”

Maddie’s and Jack’s eyes met, and a silent conversation passed between the two of them. One Danny wasn’t privy to.

Danny ignored them and focused on transferring to the couch. He settled in the worn cushions, embracing their familiar comfort. His eyes drifted shut as the tension drained from his body.

“I’m fine, I swear,” he said, grabbing a throw blanket from the top of the couch. It was one of Jazz’s sheep blankets that Danny had claimed as his personal napping blanket somewhere down the line.

“Okay,” Maddie said, though her voice sounded anything but. “We’ll be down in the lab. Holler if you need us, okay?”

“Sure.”

He kept his eyes closed, listening as their footsteps moved away from him. A beeping followed by the swishing of the lab doors opening, shuffling feet, and the lab doors closing were Danny’s indication that he was alone at last. 

The last bit of tension in his neck was released as he sank deeper into the soft cushions.

Everything was like before. He was napping on the couch, his parents were in the lab, and Jazz was off being studious. 

He was back.

(Finally.)

* * *

The ringing of the doorbell jolted Danny awake. He bolted up, heart racing, as his drunk eyes flickered around the room for the source of the noise.

“I’ll get it!” Maddie strode past him.

Wait…Mom? What was she doing here?

Danny’s hands tugged at his bangs.

He was home. That was right, he was home. He’d been released from the hospital that morning and now he was home.

He felt his shoulders relax, and he collapsed back into the couch, pulling the blanket up from where it had fallen on his waist.

He was home.

That was the doorbell.

So then who was at the door?

The irrational thoughts wormed their way throughout his brain before he had a chance to put up his defensive walls. Thoughts of the Guys in White returning for seconds, complete with a signed warrant dissolving any legal protection his parents had managed to place over Danny’s head. Maybe he was safe in the hospital—after all, even criminals were entitled to hospital stays—but now that he was out of the hospital? Were his parents and their lawyers enough to protect him?

Was he going to be taken away again?

He had just begun to unconsciously itch the back of his neck—where he knew the chip was located—when he heard the front door slam.

Danny’s heart stopped.

This was it. He was going to be taken away again.

He couldn’t do it. Not a second time. 

Maybe they would just finish him off this time. Rip his core from his body right here on his living room couch and leave his family alone.

But they weren’t so merciful the first time, were they? When they sliced him open on the metal table while he was conscious? Forcing him to watch, arms strapped down beside him, as they cut through his skin, his ribs, his muscles. Forcing him to feel as their warm, latex-covered hands poked and prodded at his core, his very essence for _being._ Forcing him to endure their smirks and smiles as their hungry eyes explored his insides as if he were nothing but a mutated lab animal just begging to be torn apart, all in the name of _science._  

What made him think they wouldn’t do that again?

The blanket was too constricting. The pillows pressing against his arms were _too hot._ He didn’t want to be in this deathtrap any longer. He needed out. He needed—

His body hit something _hard._

His chest was engulfed in fire.

“Danny?”

Danny’s eyes snapped into focus. Suddenly, he was all too aware of his situation. Maddie stood tall above him, armed with two boxes of pizza. And here he was, first day back from the hospital, spread-eagle on his living room floor, gasping for air as if his lungs had just caved in. 

Maddie all but threw the pizza boxes on the coffee table. “Oh my goodness, Danny. Are you alright? What happened?”

“Sorry,” Danny wheezed. He clawed at his chest, which was already beginning to settle into a prickly simmer.

“What happened?” 

Strong arms heaved him off the floor and onto the couch. He took a few deep breaths, filling his lungs with as much air as he could.

“Sorry.”

“Danny...” His mother picked up the boxes of pizza. “ _Please_ don’t try to walk without your walker, alright? Even on the carpet, it’s still a long way down.”

“Right...sorry. I won’t...do it again.”

She stood there staring at him for a moment longer. Her lips were tight, eyebrows furrowed in an expression of concern. A piece of her brown hair fell from its tucked position behind her ears, but she made no move to reposition it as she examined him.

Danny squirmed and averted his gaze. Shame gnawed at his stomach.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah.” Danny tried to throw her a crooked smile. “It was my fault. I got...over—overconfident. Tried to stand without help. Figured...figured I’d just—just fall on the couch. Or something. If I failed.”

“Oh honey.” Maddie’s expression melted into pity.

Danny didn’t know if that was worse.

“I know it’s frustrating. But just be patient, alright? You’ll get there soon enough.”

“Yeah.”

“Now come on, it’s dinner time. I’ll go get your father and Jazz, you head over to the kitchen. Are you going to be alright? Or do you want your wheelchair?”

Danny shook his head. “No, that’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“Okay, but please be more careful. We only just got you back,” Maddie said as she crossed the living room to the lab door.

A pang of guilt hit Danny. What was he thinking? Trying to stand, to _run away,_ like he really could? If only he weren’t so _impulsive_ and _needy_.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

He watched as Maddie walked through the threshold into the lab, pizza boxes in hand. That was smart, Danny noted. Everyone knew the only way to get Jack Fenton away from his work was with food.

The sliding door shut behind Maddie, leaving Danny alone in the living room. 

Good. 

Now he could begin the momentous task of lifting his body from the soft couch, balancing between the carpet and his walker, and making his way to the kitchen. Something that three months ago would have been so easy he wouldn’t have had to wait to do until he was alone, if only to save himself from the distressed stares from his family as he struggled across the floor.

What a fucking joke he was.

Danny trying to walk wasn’t a pretty sight, not like all the movies of people taking their “miraculous” first steps from a wheelchair seemed to show. He pulled his body up, dragged his toes across the carpet, prayed his foot would land straight, and repeated the process with the next leg. It was jarring and uncomfortable on the best days and downright humiliating on the worst.

But he was improving. That’s what he kept reminding himself as he trekked across the living room and into the kitchen. That he was getting better at this. 

He didn’t need _four_ rubber stoppers on the bottom of his walker anymore. He could use the kind with two wheels and only _two_ rubber stoppers on it. 

See, Danny? Improvement.

Danny pulled a chair out from the kitchen table just as Jazz entered the kitchen. 

“Hey Danny! Welcome back!” Jazz beamed.

“Hey.”

She opened a cabinet. “You want water or juice?”

“Water’s fine.”

“Alright.”

“Hey Jazzy!” Jack waltzed into the kitchen a moment later with Maddie in tow. “How was school today?”

“It was good!” She turned to Danny, her eyes bright. “Everyone’s been asking about you, Danny. They all can’t wait for you to return!” 

Danny looked down at the table, his face tight. Since when did anyone care about him at Casper High? Other than Sam and Tucker and _maybe_ Valerie—depending on how she still felt about him—Danny couldn’t recall anyone who ever cared about his existence. 

Danny Fenton was a loser, a freak. He was nothing. Nobody cared about him as anything other than a punching bag, and he assumed that’s how it always would be.

But then there was something that Miguel had told him that morning, something that he’d forgotten about until now. Something that didn’t seem _right._

_“So many people fought for you, and you have so many people back home waiting for you. Your friends and family. All your classmates...”_

How did Miguel know about _any_ of Danny’s classmates? 

And besides, who in the hell would fight for Danny _Fenton?_

Maddie set the pizza boxes down on the counter. “I hope you don’t mind the take-out. I wanted to make a big home-cooked dinner but I wasn’t sure what you’d want and—”

“It’s fine,” Danny said quickly. He looked down and realized his legs were trembling. Walking across the carpet in his living room had taken far more out of him than he predicted. He slid down in his chair, trying not to allow his face to betray how relieved he was to be off his feet.

“It’s pepperoni. Your favorite!” she added.

He nodded. Right, pepperoni pizza was his favorite kind of pizza. 

He got pizza once in inpatient. A local construction company had come to the hospital armed with T-shirts, fabric markers, and several boxes of pre-approved cheese pizza. 

There had been one worker in particular that Danny talked to for the majority of the hour. It was a younger employee, one whose nonchalant “hey” had won over Danny’s trust immediately. They sat in silence for a few minutes, switching off between coloring and munching on their slices of pizza, before the employee casually asked him what his preferred toppings were. Only moments later, the conversation devolved into a heated debate over which chain in the city made the superior pizza. 

It had been such a silly debate. But it was exactly the senseless talk that Danny needed to feel normal again. Just one random engineer to come to the hospital, sit down next to Danny, and ask about his pizza preferences as if he _weren’t_ an overpowered half-ghost that had just been used as the government’s personal toy.

“How many slices do you want? One or two?” Jazz asked, opening the pizza box and peering inside.

The smell of grease, cheese, and _something else_ wafted into the air. 

Danny frowned, his hand freezing over the table. He inhaled the odd scent again and pinched his eyebrows together.

Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but...no, that was impossible.

This was _pizza._ Not that other thing. Danny _liked_ pizza.

“Hello? Earth to Danny!” 

Danny glanced up to see Jazz waving her hand at him.

“There he is! One slice or two?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. His mouth was too dry. What was going on with him?

His eyes glazed over to the pizza boxes, and the smell intensified.

No, no, no. This was _wrong._ This was _all wrong._

“Danny?”

“One,” he heard himself saying. “One’s fine.”

In the distance, he saw Jazz plop a gooey slice onto a plate and place it in front of him.

Oh god. The evil scent was right in front of him. The processed meat was right there just inches from his body. It was right there.

He felt sick.

“Alright, first family dinner!” Jack said, sitting down beside Danny. He nudged Danny’s arm. “What do you think? You know, we just slaved away over this home-cooked meal. It’s truly five-star quality!”

He couldn’t move. He sat frozen in his seat, watching as the red circles emitted the exact smell that had plagued him for so long in the facility.

“Come on, Dad! Stop being obnoxious!”

“Aw, lighten up a little, Jazzy! It’s Danno’s first day back, let us have a little fun!”

He couldn’t breathe. The odor travelled like slime down his esophagus. It filled his lungs and stomach with its horrifying stench, choking him with its bare fingers.

“Yes, _exactly._ It’s his first day back! Do you know how fragile the teenage mind is during periods of transition? Danny needs all the stability he can get!”

“Jack, honey, how many slices do you want?”

“Give me two to start, and I’m sure I’ll grab more! You know, I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’m starving!”

He couldn’t think. It was everywhere. He couldn’t escape. 

“This is from the place downtown, right? The one off Saint Paul’s street?”

“Of course, Jazz! What kind of mother would I be if I settled for anything less?”

The smell was _so overpowering._

“You know, I don’t know how they do it. They get the crusts just perfect every time. I’ve tried a lot of pizza places in Amity Park—”

“Oh, we know.”

“—and no one does it like this place does.”

It was exactly like before. It was the same odor. 

No, Fenton. Stop. It’s different. This isn’t Operative O. This is _your parents, idiot._ They didn’t...they wouldn’t…

But that’s what he’d thought last time, right? That no one would actually be so cruel as to do _that._

_Stop it._

“Danny, aren’t you going to eat your pizza? You must be hungry. You haven’t eaten in a while.”

The haze clouding Danny’s vision dissipated, and he turned his head up to see Maddie’s focus trained on him. She held a partially eaten pizza slice up with one hand, the other tapping lightly on the table. 

His eyes lowered to his plate where his own untouched slice of pizza lay.

“Oh.”

When had they started eating?

He took a deep breath and forced his hand over to his slice. His fingers touched the crust, and he fought the knee-jerk reaction to pull his hand back into his chest. The slabs of meat seemed to glower at him from atop their cheesy domain.

_Don’t think about it._

His hands were shaking. He hadn’t even realized until now, but his hands were definitely shaking.

Was he sure he was only paralyzed from the waist down? His arms weren’t working properly either. And his hands felt cold like his legs. Maybe his spine was fractured in multiple places. Maybe he needed to go back to the—

_No._

He could do this. He needed to or else his mother would tell his psychologist that he wasn’t eating and they would force him to drink those disgusting protein shakes again. 

He could do this.

He slowly raised the pizza slice up to his mouth, holding his breath as he did so. 

It didn’t help. The pepperoni slices were still too nauseating. Their particles drenched the air, seeping into his skin and infecting his mind. It was too much, it was too much.

He bit down on the pizza.

The pepperoni detonated in his mouth, and in a blast of light, he was transported back to the putrid white cell where the stench of processed meat draped the air. 

It was in his mouth. Oh god, it was in his mouth.

“Whoa, son!”

“Danny!”

He was drowning. He couldn’t breathe. _He couldn’t breathe_. It was _everywhere,_ on his skin, his clothes. Oh no, oh no. He didn’t want it. Please, _he didn’t want it._

_“Danny!”_

His brain broke the surface of the crashing waves and suddenly he was back at the kitchen table, gripping his hair like it was his lifeline. He felt his head lower, and he saw the evil slice of pizza smeared on his lap. 

“Sorry.”

His voice sounded weak to his own ears.

“Oh, Danno…” Jack leaned over and plucked the pizza from Danny’s lap.

Danny swallowed. His throat felt tight. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Danny?” Maddie prodded gently. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Danny stared at the sauce covering his lap.

He thought he liked pepperoni pizza. He always had. _Always_. 

But now the smell was overwhelming and it reminded him of _being there_ and he didn’t understand why he couldn’t get it out of his head why couldn’t he just burn that memory from his mind completely and never have to bring it up to anyone why was it coming back now of all times when he was just trying to have a relaxing first night home with his family he _didn’t want it he didn’t—_

He felt a gentle hand squeeze his shoulder and he swiveled his head to see the unwavering blue eyes of his father.

“Danno...son,” Jack said, his thumb rubbing circles on Danny’s shoulder. “It’s going to be alright.”

Tears stung at the back of his eyes. He blinked, forcing them away.

He was _not_ crying over this.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Maddie repeated.

No, he couldn’t. 

He couldn’t tell anyone. 

Ever.

He shook his head, looking up at Maddie with a glassy, tortured expression that betrayed everything he felt inside him.

“Oh, honey.” Maddie wrapped her arms around him as she pulled him close to her chest. 

His arms hung limp at his sides. He was still too frozen, still choking on the thick air, still fighting the thick tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks. But he was _safe_. He was safe and protected. 

He was home.

“We can’t make all this disappear. But we _can_ help you through it tonight if you’ll let us.”

Danny tightened his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to say _anything_ related to that. But the smell was still heavy. Still overpowering. He still saw glimpses of white and green through his closed eyes.

“The pepperoni,” he forced out.

Maddie didn’t prod further. She simply tightened her hold on his trembling body as he tried not to break down in her arms.

He was vaguely aware of Jack sliding out from the seat next to him, but he didn’t question it. He didn’t have the mental energy to worry about what his dad was doing. 

He felt something wet touch his head, followed by a quiet sniff.

“Sorry,” Danny said.

“No, Danny, it’s not…” Maddie’s broken voice resonated from above him. “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m sorry this happened to you. And I’m sorry we couldn’t stop it sooner.”

It wasn’t her fault. There was nothing they could have done. It was Danny—all Danny—throughout _everything._ He was the one to go into the portal. He was the one to develop his obsession. He was the one whose identity was exposed. His parents had nothing to do with his decisions, his mistakes. They were innocent.

Maddie gave him one last squeeze before pulling away. She turned around quickly, ducking her head out of sight and rubbing her eyes. She moved towards the sink and grabbed a fistful of paper towels. 

“Jazz?” she asked. “Can you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich please?”

Danny looked back down at his lap. 

He was such a mess.

Footsteps sounded next to him and he shifted to see an outstretched hand filled with damp paper towels. He grabbed the paper towels and began wiping the remnants of the pizza off of his lap.

“I’ll be right back,” Maddie said.

She exited the room, leaving him alone with Jazz. Danny refused to turn Jazz’s way. He sat there, head down, fully concentrated on scraping every last morsel of pizza sauce from his sweatpants as if the sauce were causing him all this pain. If he could only get the sauce off his pants, he would be whole again.

Jazz must have gotten the message because she didn’t try to talk to him either.

Jack returned moments later, pizza boxes in one hand and a suspicious-looking garbage bag in the other. Setting the pizza boxes on the counter, he went over to the table and began throwing the used paper plates in the garbage. 

“It’s a bit cramped in here. Let’s move to the living room. What do you say, TV dinner? Just like old times?” Maddie asked, appearing from the doorway. She offered him his wheelchair.

Danny nodded and, with some effort, stood. He needed to get out of the smell anyway. His head felt too heavy around it.

He drifted to the living room as his parents and sister bustled around behind him. He should have felt guilty about this, too. About the fact that they all were cleaning up after _his_ mistakes. But he couldn’t help the sheer relief that ran through his body as he escaped the smell. Not that it was completely gone—it had branded his skin, it felt like—but in the living room, he could _also_ smell the vase full of flowers and the fresh air from the windows that had mysteriously opened.

Danny had just finished wrapping his body with a fuzzy throw-blanket on the couch when his family finally joined him. They sat down around him, holding plates full of cheese-only pizza with suspiciously shaped circles torn off from the top of the slices, as if nothing were wrong. As if Danny _hadn’t_ just had a panic attack over processed meat in the kitchen.

As if this were a normal night.

“Here.” Jazz handed him a paper plate with a sandwich on it. “I couldn’t remember if you liked blueberry or strawberry jelly better, so I put blueberry on one half and strawberry on the other half.”

Danny felt his lips twitch up. “Because asking was...was too hard?”

“Just eat your sandwich.”

“Alright, Fentons!” Jack plopped down on his favorite armchair and picked up the remote. “First movie night in a while! What do we feel like watching?”

The remainder of dinner was calm, save Jack’s enthusiastic science commentary during the cheesy eighties sci-fi movie they ended up choosing. 

Danny’s stomach felt like lead, but by the time the movie was over, he was surprised to look down at his plate and see that his sandwich was completely gone. He must have eaten the whole thing and not even realized it. He told Jazz the sandwich tasted perfect when she asked, but he didn’t know what it tasted like. He couldn’t remember.

Maybe that was for the better.

After all, the slight twang of pepperoni was still on his tongue and the corners of his brain were still tugging him _back there_ and every time he saw the shadow of a tree move outside a window he thought it was Operative O coming to drag him to the facility _where he belonged._

As he got ready for bed, he wondered if he _should_ tell someone about what happened to him. Anyone. Maybe his therapist? Wasn’t that what she was being paid to do? 

But he couldn’t. It was as if the Guys in White put a spell on him that prevented him from even whispering about it. He knew he would only get sick all over the therapist’s carpet if he tried to tell her. 

And after everything he’d been through—hell, he was _torn open_ like a dead frog _—_ why was _this_ the thing that was suffocating him?

_Because this was proof that you’re not human._

_And you don’t deserve to be treated like one._

_You’re disgusting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooo Danno's a lil shaky around red meat it seems...hmmm...I wonder why that may be? What a real mystery ;)
> 
> Huge shoutout to imekitty for being the world's best beta reader ever!
> 
> Next chapter is already a little under halfway written so I'll get that out to you guys soon!


	7. Support

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ: (edit notice)
> 
> If you're a new reader, this won't affect you! But I made a mistake a few chapters ago that one of my lovely readers reached out to fix. I stated that Danny will be attending an IOP program which runs after school for 3-4 hours, when in reality he would be attending a PHP program which runs 6 hours per day for a few weeks before going to the IOP. While this won't really affect the plot, I wanted to let everyone know about the edit in case of confusion!

Danny panted, his body straining from the effort it took to drag himself to the other corner of his cell. His ribs ached, his broken arm screamed, and consciousness slipped further and further from his grasp with each second. But he had done it. He made it to the other corner of his cell.

He was as far away from the red package as possible.

Operative O hadn't taken the red bag with him when he left. He'd placed it right next to Danny's face, unsealed. "So you never forget what you are."

Danny had tried to forget. He spent the last few nights in his cell trying to ignore the smell of processed liver, the pool of bile, the way his gums bled, but it was just so hard and revolting and there was no way he could have prepared himself for  _this._

The door opened, and Danny froze, his eyes glued to the ceiling above him. Was Operative O back? Danny hadn't eaten in three days, but he had been hooked up to an IV drip while the Guys in White conducted their experiments. Even then, Operative O's threat from his last visit to Danny's cell had lingered in the air like a dense cloud of smog.

"Your dinner, and a message," came a gruff voice.

Danny let out a shuddering breath. It wasn't Operative O. This man's voice was textured like sandpaper, whereas Operative O's voice was deep and slimy.

This was someone else. Danny was safe for now.

With a bit of effort, Danny turned his head over to see a tall operative with a gloved fist held out in front of him. He opened his palms, revealing three granola bars.

"Operative O would like me to inform you that he's displeased with your performance this week. Your ectoplasm levels have dropped significantly, and it's hindering our research. Either you eat this or Operative O will see to it that your nutrients are leveled out through other means." He glanced at the red bag, his lips curled into a snarl.

Danny's heart sank. Lugging his useless body to this side of the cell had taken every morsel of strength he had left in him. He could barely keep his eyes open, let alone force food down his stomach.

And after his last meal, Danny wasn't sure he ever wanted to eat again.

"IV fluids are being administered as only a temporary measure because of your ectoplasm's value. But don't get it wrong, ghost." The man paused, dropping the granola bars onto the floor. "You're not human. If we don't give IV fluids to lab rats, what makes you think you're special enough to deserve any?"

 _I don't,_ Danny wanted to say.  _I know I'm not special enough._

But instead, he continued to lie on the floor, glaring at the operative. Because talking back to him would only result in more punishment, more pain, and Danny wasn't sure how much more his body could take.

The man studied his watch. "It's six-fifteen. That means you have less than fourteen hours to consume these, or else…" His eyes flickered back over to the red package.

"Give them...give them…" Danny reached for the granola bars. "I...I'll...do it...give them…"

The operative's expression hardened into stone, and before Danny could make a sound of protest, he kicked the granola bars to the opposite side of the cell.

Right next to the red package.

"You don't get to give me orders, ghost." The man turned and pressed his keycard to a black scanner on the wall. The scanner beeped and the door slid open.

Danny blinked at the sudden pouring of light into his cell.

He itched to stand up, punch this operative in the face, and bolt into the hallway. Maybe he had turned down the wrong hallway last week when he tried escaping. If he tried this time, he would go down a different path. Turn right instead of left. Maybe this time, he would find the exit so he could go home.

But that was stupid.

There was no point. He couldn't walk. He couldn't fly. What, was he supposed to  _drag_ himself out of the facility?

Like  _that_  would work.

"Tick tock, ghost." The gravelly voice of the man pulled Danny back to reality. "Fourteen hours."

The door to his cell slid shut, and once again Danny was alone.

He looked back at the granola bars and tried to ignore the red bag, but it was too bright. It was impossible to ignore. Not to mention, the bag was  _still open_ and still smelled  _like that_ and now he was going to have to go near it to eat the granola bars which made him want to vomit all over again. But he had to do it. He had to survive.

It was only three granola bars. He could do it.

Tears began pooling in his eyes, and he blinked, fighting them back. Operative O was likely viewing him from the security cameras, and Danny wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of watching him melt down over this. Not again.

He pressed his palm down on the damp floor and tried to pull himself forward, but his back cried out in dissent. He paused, letting out a sharp breath, only for his chest to prickle and—

_His chest?_

Why did his chest hurt?

It was as if Danny were a puppet on strings. An invisible hand pushed his head down until he was met with his chest—or what was  _supposed_  to be his chest.

His body was split open, skin painted with green. Broken ribs stuck out in odd angles, some sawed off completely. His green muscles pulsed and twitched in time with his breathing.

_No…_

He tried to turn away, but something was holding his forehead in place. His eyes swung to and fro in desperation, only to land on Operative O.

When had he gotten here? Why was he in his cell? He still had fourteen hours left.

But he wasn't in his cell anymore. It was too bright.

Operative O lifted his arm up, bringing what  _appeared_  to be one of Danny's  _torn off_ ribs up to his eyes. He inspected the bone like it was a rare gem, twirling it around and catching specks of light in its green coating.

_No...give that back...give it…_

Danny made a sound that could only be described as a  _gurgle_ , and Operative O locked eyes with him. "Welcome back to consciousness, dog."

The bright lights glared down at him, and he tried to look away  _again_ but the room was white. It was white and green and filled with voices and sharp objects and pools of ectoplasm and he  _hurt_ he hurt he tried to scream but he couldn't make a sound he wanted to go  _home_.

He had to...had to…

Something touched his core.

* * *

 

Danny's eyes flew open. Static crackled in his ears and flashes of white and green played like strobe lights in his vision.

He leapt from his bed and barely made it two steps before he fell, hitting the floor and eliciting a wave of shock throughout his body. He needed to escape. He needed to get out of here. He tried to stand again, but like a toddler, he was reduced to crawling across the rough carpet until he found his bureau. He pulled himself up and flung open his bedroom door before stumbling and falling to the bathroom.

He shut the door and dragged himself over to the toilet. Gripping the white basin, he gagged. Nothing came up but spit, and he tried again, desperate to rid his body of the pepperoni and stray ectoplasm and everything that was in the red bag.

His chest burned.

His chest.

He lifted a shaking, sweating hand and pressed it onto his shirt.

It was damp. Oh god, it was damp. It was wet with his ectoplasm. He was  _cut open there was ectoplasm everywhere._ He ripped the offending garment over his head and tossed it to the side, not bothering to look where it landed. It didn't matter, as long as it was off his body.

Once again, he pressed a hand to his chest, feeling for a hole or ectoplasm or  _anything_  to indicate he was still trapped on the metal table, being ripped apart from the inside out. But he only felt the prickly  _closed_  lines of skin where the doctors had sewn his body shut like a rag doll.

He was safe. His chest was closed. It had healed. It was wet with perspiration, not ectoplasm. Breathe two three, out two three.

Danny took a deep breath and looked around for his shirt. It had landed on the plastic bench his parents bought for the tub that he had to use because Danny  _Fenton_  was no longer capable of standing to shower. Just another change in his life.

He reluctantly pulled his shirt back over his head. He didn't want the damp fabric to touch his skin—after a certain point, his jumpsuit was never dry in the GiW facility—but he didn't want to look at his bare chest anymore because it reminded him too much of  _that night_ and he  _couldn't handle it he felt like he was dying._

In two three, out two three.

He placed a trembling hand on the counter and struggled upwards. His body was exhausted, and yet his brain wouldn't stop firing neurons, wouldn't stop telling him to run, wouldn't stop showing him flashes of green against the white tiles of his bathroom floor or convincing him that the shadows of the room were the Guys in White coming back they're coming for you Danny get ready.

Fourteen hours. He only had fourteen hours of safety left.

Danny leaned over the counter, resting his elbows along the cold marble and gripping his hair.

Come on, Danny,  _come on!_  Breathe two three, out two three.

It wasn't working. His legs felt like Jell-O and he still couldn't breathe and his chest still ached. He needed to shut his brain off. Stop thinking. He needed something to help.

He threw open the medicine cabinet before he could tell himself otherwise. Where was his anxiety medication? Maddie kept a weekly pill planner in the kitchen but she had to refill it every Saturday night so that meant that the rest of his monthly supply had to be somewhere, right?

He dug around, knocking aside bottles of Advil and Tylenol. Those wouldn't do. He needed something stronger he needed help he couldn't go back to sleep without it.

His hand gripped a bottle. Oxycodone. Left over from his surgeries. He couldn't take this. He should flush it. He needed his prescribed medication, not  _this_.

He placed the oxycodone on the counter and searched through the cabinets again. Tylenol, Advil, Excedrin, Nyquil, Dayquil, Jazz's stupid One A Day pills that Danny was  _sure_  was unnecessary bullshit, but no anxiety pills. They weren't here.  _They weren't here._

This wasn't right. This wasn't  _normal._ He knew his psychiatrist told his parents to monitor his medication, to not allow him access to it, but Danny didn't think his parents would actually follow that rule. They had never been so meticulous, so  _observant._ Why start now?

His legs were threatening to give out, but maybe if he searched  _one more time_  he would find his prescription. It  _had_  to be here. There was no way his parents were responsible enough to pay attention to  _all_  the details.

He reached for the medicine cabinet again only for his legs to buckle. He lowered himself to the ground, defeated, his brain still telling him to get back up, his core still screaming at him to protect himself because he only had fourteen hours left, the red bag with its haunting smell still seeping through the corners of his mind.

_Please let me rest. Just let me sleep._

He curled in on himself, hugging his damp T-shirt at his chest. If only he had finished those granola bars. He had  _fourteen hours_ , and he couldn't do it. The Guys in White had generously offered him a fighting chance, and he failed.

Maybe they were right. Maybe he didn't deserve the food after all.

" _You knew this was coming," Operative O hissed._

_Danny shook his head. "Please…"_

" _You're begging me now? How pathetic. You really are a dog."_

"Shut up. I'm not a dog," he whispered. He gripped his scalp. "I'm not. I'm not."

He turned back to the orange bottle on the counter. That was all he had. It was his only option.

He shouldn't do it. But…

The packaging had his name on it. The doctors had taken everything about him into account when they prescribed the pills. And, thanks to his healing factor, he hadn't even come close to finishing his prescription.

Just one more pill wouldn't hurt. Besides, he  _needed_  them. They were prescribed to him for a  _reason_. And it wasn't like this was the first time he had done something like this.

He hardly remembered it now, but one good hit from a blood blossom-fused ecto-gun from Valerie had left him screaming. It had apparently shaken Sam and Tucker to their core, and they said an opioid courtesy of Mrs. Manson's medicine cabinet was the only thing they could think of to help him. No one brought it up after that, and no one ever told Jazz what happened. The weapon in question mysteriously disappeared from Valerie's arsenal the next day, much to her apparent dismay, but Danny never confronted Vlad about it.

It was as if that day never happened.

Until now.

It was just like before. These memories in the government facility were his new Blood Blossoms; they infected his skin, his bones, his  _mind_. He couldn't turn them off, he couldn't run away, he couldn't do  _anything_  but crawl to the bathroom like a toddler, sit on the cold floor, and tear his hair out of his skull.

Danny reached up and snatched the oxycodone off the counter.

* * *

Dragging his body onto his bed from the floor turned into an impossible task, or at least not possible without ripping off his comforter and sheets in the process. It was moments like these that Danny was thankful he owned a nightstand.

He stood and glanced over at the window. He had wanted to ask his mother to open it for him before he went to bed, but he had been too embarrassed. It was such a small thing anyway; Danny didn't want to bother her any more than he already had that night.

His phone screen lit up, and Danny blinked, his eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness. It was flashing green: fully charged.

Danny lowered himself onto his bed and took his phone from its charger cord. Jazz must have plugged it in for him at some point while he was in inpatient. She was always pushing for him to do normal teenage things before everything happened.

That, or this was her subtle way of telling him to text Sam and Tucker. To let them know he was back. That he was okay now.

He could text them later. They were probably asleep anyway.

Danny pulled his comforter over him and pressed the home button on his phone. His screen lit up again with the force of a thousand suns, and Danny ignored the wall of notifications in favor of turning the screen brightness down.

He unlocked his phone—pointedly averting his gaze from his messenger app—and opened Twitter.

The Twitter was Tucker's idea. In fact, it was so much Tucker's idea that Danny didn't even know about it until Dash was laughing in his face about how "Danny Phantom liked my tweet! Not that he'd ever notice  _you_ , Fentino!"

Oh, the irony.

Tucker had been so smug about it when Danny confronted him after school that day, pointing out that Danny needed to work on turning his brand from "creepy dead teenager in a jumpsuit" to "lovable dead goofball in a jumpsuit" if he ever wanted to win the public over. Even Sam, who had once said that Twitter was where failed comedians went to die, agreed.

So, Danny Phantom got a Twitter account.

And now the public knew who he really was.

Danny clicked on his timeline and read his bio. "Going to fight whoever said 'I'll sleep when I'm dead' in the Denny's parking lot."

That was Tucker's doing as well, arguing that Danny's suggestion of "Amity Park's local Casper" didn't quite have the right tone they were looking for.

He scrolled down to see his most recent tweet, a video message from July Fourth, just a week before he was revealed. He squinted at the screen, trying to recall what he had said. But that month had turned into such a nightmare that now trying to remember  _anything_  happy from July seemed impossible.

He clicked on the video, and the cheery face of Danny Phantom popped onto the screen. Phantom stepped back, revealing an American flag draped across him like a cape.

"Hello, citizens!" he exclaimed, his voice pitched down in his goofy 'hero voice.' His eyes were dancing with light, and his grin was so wide that Danny could see his glowing teeth. "Just your resident ghost here wishing my American followers a happy Fourth! Go eat some tasty cookout, check out your local fireworks, and have fun! Don't drink and drive!"

Something clicked in his brain, and suddenly, he remembered that day. He had been invited to the Foley's annual barbecue. It was always a huge event, filled with extended family, Mrs. Foley's coworkers, and other close friends. In all the commotion, Danny and Tucker had managed to sneak off with the American flag from the flagpole to film the silly message.

Danny felt the corners of his lips twitch up. He had been such a goofball then. So carefree, so innocent, like nothing could bring him down.

He glanced down to see the top comment.  _Thanks, Mom,_  it read.

He snorted. He had almost forgotten the running joke of his being everyone's "ghost mom" despite his obvious outward appearance as a teenage boy.

He scrolled down some more.

_How does a ghost even get a flag? You can't exactly walk into a Walmart and purchase one._

_Happy fourth to you too, Phantom!_

_Serious question: do other American ghosts in the GZ celebrate American holidays? Or just the ones that haunt in the US?_

But as he scrolled farther, his smile began to drop. The comments were more recent. More  _relevant_.

Things Danny didn't want to see.

_My heart goes out to you, Danny. No one should have to go through what you did._

_I'm praying for you._

_r u ok? its been a while since u got out…_

_A ghost pretending to be human to spy on highschoolers? So fucking creepy._

_dumbass, can you not read? scientists are saying he's a hybrid. like a real life arnold palmer._

_That's even creepier._

_phantom come back we miss you!_

_too bad the government didnt finish u off_

Danny clicked out of the app. Going on his Twitter was a dumb idea. He shouldn't have been so cocky.

But he couldn't help the sudden spark of curiosity that had formed inside him, and he found himself opening Safari and typing  _Danny Phantom_  into the search bar.

Just how much did the public know about him?

He knew  _some_  things from what the other teens told him in inpatient. He knew he had been on the news nonstop while he was in the government facility, and he knew his family had done press conferences denouncing much of the widely accepted ecto-biology facts of the time. His sister had also mentioned the word "protest" but Danny couldn't imagine  _anyone_  protesting for his release.

He knew a lot of people were afraid of him, even disgusted by him. He knew people didn't want the government to release him. He knew the government wanted to use his ectoplasm to power their technology. He knew people wanted him dead.

He clicked on the first link that popped up. It was a video from Amity Park Central News. The video buffered, and he scrolled down to see the release date.

A week ago. Perfect.

He fullscreened the video and hit play.

A brunette woman appeared on the screen, sitting tall in front of the APC News backdrop. The backdrop shifted, morphing into a determined Danny Phantom flying through the air on one half and a shy Danny Fenton on the other.

The woman began speaking. "Over the summer, Amity Park's resident ghost hero, Danny Phantom, was revealed to be none other than local high schooler Daniel Fenton. Ecto-biologists around the world are calling him the first ever human-ghost hybrid, and while many are theorizing how this came to be, no question has been so searched for by the public over these past few months as the question of what happened to Danny Fenton Phantom, and where is he now?

"After his reveal back in July, the government was quick to detain him, citing infringements on the Anti Ecto Control Act. However, with strong public outcry and a court case between the Fenton family and the state of Illinois, Danny was released from the government. He returned home to his family in critical condition and was held in Amity Central Hospital for three weeks with reports of scarring, multiple broken bones, a spinal cord injury, and severe malnutrition. Danny can be seen exiting the hospital in a wheelchair here, and it is unsure at this time if he'll ever be able to fight ghostly invaders again.

"Although Danny Fenton Phantom attempted to return to public high school, sources say he suffered a nervous breakdown after only a few hours inside of the building. He was removed from Casper High and has not been seen again. Sources tell us that he is currently recovering in a psychiatric facility, where he is kept under twenty-four hour supervision. Sources also tell us that he is doing well and that he's set to be released soon. We at APC News wish him all the best during his journey to recovery. Tim, back to you."

The video cut to black.

Danny stared at his screen.

So, that was it then. The public knew everything.

Well, not  _everything._  They only knew the general timeline, not the intimate details of how and why Danny Fenton Phantom ended up this way. There were probably rumors floating around, wild conspiracies on the internet, but no one  _knew._

Good. Danny intended to keep it this way.

He clicked the back arrow and scrolled through the headers for a few more articles and videos. Titles like "Why The Government Took Danny Phantom" "Who is Danny Fenton/Phantom? A Look on His Home Life, School Life, and More!" and "Parents of Danny Fenton Phantom Speak Out" flashed before his eyes, but he kept scrolling until one particular title caught his eye.

"March for Danny Phantom Slideshow Photographs"

... _what?_

So there  _was_  a protest for him?

He stared at the title, his brows slowly creasing. This didn't make sense. None of this made sense.

His finger hovered over the link.

Why would anyone want to hold a protest for him? He was a freak of nature, he shouldn't exist.

And besides, he was just  _one_  person. Just one of millions in this country. Hundreds of children and teens went missing every year, and yet there was a protest for  _him_? Why?

Despite his bewildered state, he pressed his finger down on the link.

The page loaded, revealing a large photograph angled towards a crowd of people wearing T-shirts and shorts against a blue sky. People in the crowd held up signs that said things such as "Free Danny Phantom!" and "One of Us!"

He pressed the next button, scrolling from photo to photo of hundreds—no,  _thousands_  of people who had taken to the streets  _for him._  They had shouted, marched, demanded his release.

How had he missed this?

He paused at each photo, soaking in the colors and captions and the stories each person had to share  _about him._

A woman standing tall, wearing a white cropped shirt and high-waisted blue shorts. Her immaculate afro was combed out above her head, and her smile was wide, confident. In her hand she held a sign covered in green and silver glitter.

" _My apartment building caught on fire, but I didn't know. I'm deaf, I couldn't hear the fire alarms. By the time I smelled the smoke, it was too late. All my exits were blocked. But then Danny Phantom came, and I knew everything was going to be okay." —Tamara, 32_

A small boy with sandy red hair and freckles, dressed in a black T-shirt with the DP logo on the center. His arms were stretched out beside him as if he were trying to hug the world.

" _The ghost was THIS big! It was huge! It went BAM BAM and the windows broke! But I didn't cry because Phantom flew in and he zapped the big ghost and saved the day!" —Lucas, 7_

A tall, lanky man with straight brown hair that was split with a clean part to the side. He held a sign against the gray fabric of his T-shirt that read "Why do cadavers have more rights than a sentient person?"

" _A building collapsed and I got trapped under some rubble. I didn't know how long I was under there, but I was sure I was going to die. Suddenly, I felt cold arms around me, lifting me up and onto the street. I turned around and there he was: Phantom. He saved my life that day. Now it's time for me to save his." —Keith, 26_

Danny shook his head, looking at each photograph as if they were lost paintings.

He couldn't believe it. There was no way that he had done all this, that he had affected this many people around him.

And yet, as he dug through his damaged brain, he  _remembered_  these incidents. He remembered when a spirit accidentally lost control and set two buildings on fire, the day when one of Skulker's hunts had brought him to an elementary school, how Spectra and Bertrand had collapsed an office building to prey on the grieving.

He pressed the next button and froze. His eyes widened into saucers.

There, standing against the thousands of others, were Sam and Tucker.

Sam held a blown-up photograph glued onto a piece of poster board of the three of them, arms linked behind their backs, laughing as if someone off camera had just told the funniest joke in the world. Under the photo were the simple words, printed in bold, "Bring Our Friend Home."

Danny couldn't remember what they had all been laughing about now, but it didn't matter. That photograph had long since been framed—a gift from Jazz—and resided on his nightstand next to a model rocket.

Danny's eyes drifted over to Tucker, and he snorted. Of  _course_  Tucker had printed out the most embarrassing photo he could find.

It was a picture of Danny, still in ghost form, asleep with his mouth wide open on Tucker's bedroom rug with a tower of Doritos balanced on his forehead. Tucker was hovering over him, giving the camera a shit-eating grin and two thumbs up.

Under his photo too were the words, "Bring Our Friend Home."

Danny's eyes drifted down to the caption.

" _He's my best friend, simple as that. He's my bro and I miss him." —Tucker, 16, event organizer._

" _I moved here when I was thirteen, and I was really alone. Danny and Tucker saw me sitting by myself at lunch and so they sat down and started talking to me as if we were already best friends. And, from that day forward, we were. I won't let the government rip him away from us so easily." —Sam, 16, event organizer._

Danny shouldn't have been surprised. Sam had attended more protests than Danny could keep track of, dragging him and Tucker along whenever she could.

And yet, he  _was_  surprised. Because he never expected anyone to care this much about him. Not Sam, not Tucker, not the thousands of others who traveled to fight for him, no one.

And suddenly, guilt was sweeping over him and he found himself staring at his text message notifications because  _he should really text Sam and Tucker_ , especially now after all they had done for him.

Truthfully, Danny hadn't thought much about Sam and Tucker over the past few weeks. Jazz gave him updates on them, but her comments were always unprompted. He didn't know why he was so damn  _nervous_ to talk to them again. Maybe it was because he didn't want to disappoint them with how different he was now. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that after he came home from critical care and Sam and Tucker came to visit, Danny spent most of their time together thinking of ways to make them leave _._

He was such a bad friend. They deserved so much better.

And after everything they had done for him, they at least deserved a text back.

He opened his message app. He had dozens of texts from various classmates, but Danny didn't even look at them. His eyes were glued to the top two messages on his phone from Sam and Tucker.

They were sent recently.

Danny took a deep breath and clicked on Sam's messages.

 

 **Sam, 9/13, 8:13am:** _Good luck in school today, Danny! :)_

 **Sam, 9/13 1:06pm:** _Hey I heard what happened. Are you okay?_

 **Sam, 9/13, 2:15pm:** _Do you want me to come over?_

 **Sam, 9/13 2:43pm:** _Danny please respond so I know you're okay._

 **Sam, 9/13, 3:09pm:** _I'm sorry but I'm really worried._

 **Sam, 9/13, 5:41pm:** _Hey I just heard back from Jazz and she told me what happened. Danny I'm SO sorry that this is all happening to you, and I hope you know you didn't deserve any of this. I know you won't see this until you get out, but I'm so proud of you for getting help. I'll always be here for you, no matter what. Focus on getting better and I'll see you soon_

 **Sam, 10/11, 6:07pm:** _Hi! Jazz told me you were coming home tomorrow. I hope everything went well. Text me when you can!_

 

Danny swallowed the lump in his throat as his eyes scanned the messages once more, then again.

Danny had been so stupid,  _so stupid,_ for ever thinking Sam didn't care. That he was just a bother to her. That staying in contact with her was a waste of time because there was no way she'd want to hang out with him anymore.

How many times tonight had he seen her prove him wrong?

He clicked out of Sam's messages and went to Tucker's only to— _holy shit._

Tucker had sent him dozens of messages over the past four weeks. And when Danny reached the top of the message chain and started reading Tucker's justification for the utter spam, he felt another wave of guilt hit him because how could he have ever doubted the selflessness and unconditional friendship from these two?

 

 **Tucker, 9/13, 1:23pm:** _yo danny. i heard about what happened in school today. u good? u want me to come over? we can play doomed or we can just chill and talk shit about people. either works for me._

 **Tucker, 9/13, 3:06pm:** _danny? u there?_

 **Tucker, 9/13, 3:55pm:** _hey we're really worried. sam's losing her shit rn. please just let me know ur alive_

 **Tucker, 9/13, 5:45pm:** _so we just found out from jazz that u went to the hospital. u wont see this till ur released but i'm sorry about everything. u dont deserve this shit._

_but since u won't see this till idk how long im just gonna turn this into my personal journal so when u get out u wont have missed out on anything! it'll be awesome dude. trust me. i'll keep u up to date on all the memes and trends_

**Tucker, 9/15, 9:13pm: [video]** _danny watch this i said 'bone apple teeth' at dinner tonight and this was my mom's reaction im dying lmfao XD_

 **Tucker, 9/19, 4:22pm:** _i've decided to keep track of every book title lancer shouts this year. So far i have little women, lord of the flies, a tale of two cities, fahrenheit 451, and the count of monte cristo_

 **Tucker, 9/20, 11:18am: [image]** _i'm sure you'll appreciate this meme_

 **Tucker, 9/22, 5:31pm:** _so the nasty burger added a new burger called the ecto-delight and it's just a regular nasty supreme but with avocado im like wtf dude that's straight up sacrilegious! sam says it's an improvement but i told her to shove her tofu melt up her ass. back me up here danny_

 **Tucker, 9/23, 8:02pm:** _dead teacher 5 is in theaters now but since i'm such a WONDERFUL and AMAZING friend i've decided—with no prompting from Sam—that we will await ur return before we watch it_

 **Tucker, 9/23, 8:22pm:** _but like u still better get out before it's out of theaters. no pressure tho_

 **Tucker: 9/23, 8:25pm:** _sam says that was mean and that OF COURSE we're gonna wait for you, even if that means we end up watching it on her home theater and i have to risk my laptop security when im inevitably chosen to pirate the movie for u two goons cuz neither of u know what the words "anti-virus software" means_

 **Tucker, 9/25, 4:55pm: [image]** _ember thought u were home so she brought cujo over cuz he misses u so we gave him one of ur socks and he fell asleep with it_

 

The texts went on, but Danny couldn't see them through his blurred vision.

He brought a hand up to his eyes. He didn't deserve them. He had been so distant when he saw them the month before, and they still showed so much love.

Miguel was right. He had so much support from his friends, family, and even people he hadn't met outside of his Phantom form. He thought back to the protest, the signs, the photos of all those people who spent their Saturday pressuring the government to release him, shutting down roads and infiltrating news channels in the process.

All thanks to Sam and Tucker.  _Event organizers._

He felt a tear slip from his eye, followed by another. God, he didn't even  _realize._ Here he was, sitting here moping like he had no one. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

More than anything, he wanted to show his friends that he wasn't a disappointment. That they didn't save him from the government for nothing. Because he didn't understand why they believed in him so much, but they  _did_ and that's what was important.

He wiped the tears off his cheeks. He was such a mess.  _Such_  a mess.

He wanted to go wake up Jazz and hug her, tell her how much he appreciated and loved her too. Tell her thanks for visiting him so much while he was in inpatient and before at the hospital. Once he was allowed visitors at the general hospital, she used to drive there straight from school every day. Even if he was asleep, she would sit there quietly and do her homework.

He never realized until now just how thankful he was for that. She was such a good sister. He didn't deserve her.

His breathing was calming down, and he yawned. Oh wow, he was  _exhausted_. He should go to sleep.

Yeah, sleep sounded nice.

He went to put his phone down and stopped. Sam and Tucker needed a response if he was going to be a better friend to them now.

He opened up a new group chat with the two of them and began typing.

 

 **Danny, 2:27am:** _hey! sorry for not reaching out yesterday, i was rlly tired but u guys are so great and i rlly missed u both these past few weeks and i cant wait to see u. I know ur both asleep right now but if u wanna hang out tomorrow and play doomed lemme know_

 

Okay, that was done. Just in time too because his comforter felt so soft and amazing and he never realized how squishy his pillow was. He kind of wanted to sleep on his side but he was too tired to put a pillow between his legs so he would just have to remember that for next time.

He closed his eyes and yawned again. He couldn't remember the last time he felt so relaxed. And loved.

Everything was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Also, on my tumblr (@lexosaurus) I've been getting some DM's rightfully concerned about how gore-y this is gonna get. I would say this chapter's flashback is a pretty good indicator of how in-depth I'm willing to go. I can think of one scene that goes a bit further. While I will heavily imply certain topics, there are certain lines I will not cross!
> 
> HUGE thank you to my lovely beta reader imekitty! We share veryyyy similar fic-writing tastes so if you like this fic, you'll LOVE hers!


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